


Take Me Out

by AndreaLyn



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:11:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the beginning of another legendary season and Team E has been training for this for too long to do anything but win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If anyone was to enter the dirty little Irish bar on 4th Ave the night spring camp ended, they would have found themselves accosted by a joyous atmosphere of revelry, a truly debauched scene, and possibly two or three very drunk baseball players looking for a good time.

They had earned it after a heinous and treacherous training season.

“Here’s to being done,” Toye saluted Luz with his glass, leaning heavily over the bar as several of the men started to sing dirty limericks behind them. To their right, an enthusiastic darts game was going on between Muck and Malarkey and somewhere down in the corner of the bar, there was a loud discussion involving half the team and discussing just what kind of gory fate would best appreciate their training-coach.

Herbert Sobel. The very name could give men chills and there would be double the wariness. He had made them work seven days a week for at least fourteen hours a day and just when they thought they were through, he would find something wrong with their behavior to merit extra work.

They were free of him finally, escaping the clutches of a training coach and gliding into the waiting hands of someone more capable of leading them to victory in the form of Richard Winters with Lewis Nixon calling the plays beside him.

It was like ‘manna from fucking heaven’ as Joe Liebgott liked to put it.

“What’re you gonna do now that we aren’t passing out exhausted every night?” Toye was asking Luz as he filled up four beers in front of them (not in any show of generosity, but rather to keep them well into their boots with liquor).

Luz glanced up, grinning good-naturedly. “Besides actually get to keep a porno under my bed for once? Hell, Joe, I don’t know. I’ll think about it as it happens.” He lifted one overflowing mug up to the other man. “C’mon, here’s to Express and being the toughest sons of bitches around because of that goddamn hill.”  
  
“Fucking Currahee,” Martin groused from beside them.

“Hey, it’s the only reason my calves are half as pretty as they are!” Malarkey joked from across the room.

“Not half as pretty as you think,” Muck easily joked, turning his focus back to the dartboard before letting loose another of the darts to the target, missing by just a scant inch. “Come on, switch the subject!”

Across the room, Smokey was shuffling across the crowd with two bottles of beer, pressing one over to Lipton, who was in the middle of reading a letter that he seemed to be keeping secret from the general populace.

“Secret romance, Lip?” Smokey joked broadly.

The only response was that cool and even smile, the one that neither agreed or disagreed and Lipton folded up the letter (well-worn, by the looks of it, as if it had been folded and unfolded a hundred times) and tucked it into his front pocket, accepting the beer. “You seen Coach Winters, Smokey?” he asked politely.

“Not since Nix got into town,” Smokey grinned. “You know the rumor’s surrounding that one.”

You would have had to be deaf, dumb and blind to have missed out on the fact that there was talk surrounding Lew Nixon and Dick Winters since they had first become the formidable coach-and-tactic team that they were. Some people said they were just old coworkers who hailed from Nixon, New Jersey and had made a living getting into sports to satisfy Winters’ jock-needs. Some others commented that it was less friendship and more a couple situation.

From the few meetings that they had with Dick Winters, the E Team couldn’t really see him as the sort of man who could ever be with anyone of the same gender (especially not with someone with Nixon’s reputation).

There were some people of the wait-and-see persuasion. There also happened to be many a bet riding on that persuasion, as well.

The current high-bidder in that pool was Malarkey and an anonymous bidder that most suspected to be Nixon himself, but that couldn’t be proven.

The night passed easily and too many men got too deep into their drinks. The hotel they were staying in was a walk away and the cool night sobered most of them up enough to keep them from doing anything too embarrassing (that would get reported straight to Sink if they weren’t careful).

The last to leave the bar were a very inebriated and very joyful Luz and Perconte (the latter of which was showing off his fine new watch collection as hustled from the fine patrons of the bar).

“Whaddaya think, Frank?” Luz slurred as he supported himself on the other man. “Think we got ourselves a shot this year?”

“If you can keep your hands off the women and your voice out of the impressions for a week, maybe you’ll have a shot at getting scouted,” Perconte mumbled, swaggering to the side and swaying as he tried his damnedest to keep both Luz and himself vertical. “Tell me you ain’t got nothing planned for pranks, George. Please. After last year’s trick with the rooms…”

“Christ, I bet Bill is still finding newspapers,” Luz cackled.

“…that nearly got us  _thrown out of the league_ , how about you just focus on your playing, huh?”

Luz just flashed the brightest of grins Perconte’s way as he dug out a couple of cigarettes and gifted one to Perconte with a bring gleam in his eye. “Fuck no,” he announced with great vehemence, lighting their cigarettes as they leaned against the pillars outside their hotel. “What’s the fun in following orders?”

Perconte groaned as he shook his head (and yet still indulged in the proffered cigarette). “Here’s to riding out the rest of the years on our PDC’s,” he muttered. “And hoping we make it to the end at the rate you’re gunning to get us kicked out.”

“The fun is in the mischief, Frank,” Luz advised very seriously. “Come on, get that stick outta your ass. Who do you think you are,  _Martin_?”

“Luz, just…don’t get me in shit.”

“Aw, Frank,” Luz mock-swooned. “Promise. At least, for the first week, then who knows what the hell I’m doing anymore.”

Perconte reasoned that it was falling in place to be like the season before, but with an actual shot at winning now that they were a lean and mean fighting force thanks to that son of a bitch Sobel.

Hell, maybe he’d actually been good for something, after all.

*

In the league of teams, there was one that had been spoken of from day one before recruiting had even begun and there was only a coach to the team. The Daredevils were being headed up by Ronald Speirs this year and his history in the league was a prolific one, to say the least. Colorful was probably a better way to put it.

“I heard he benched his whole team once,” Perconte commented as he shoved his toothbrush back into his mouth, staring into the mirror and spitting into the sink. “Pulled recruits off the street, shoved them into uniforms, made them play instead.”

“Come on, that’s just stupid,” Malarkey complained.

“Yeah,” Muck said defensively. “I heard it was more like he walked out to the mound, took the pitcher’s wrist, and  _broke it_  himself so he could sub the guy out.”

“He broke the guys’ wrist?” Penk echoed with the kind of shock that usually came from hearing that story.

“Just be glad we’re on Team Express and not Daredevils this year,” Malarkey swore under his breath. “You guys met the new recruits coming in?”

“Welsh and Compton? Nah, they’re due in tomorrow.”

“I heard Compton’s a star catcher and was first pick in the draft, but he was over in France doing a tour of the place to see if he would play internationally,” Luz announced as he wandered into the bathroom of the clubhouse, towel draped over his white t-shirt and a grin on his face. “Boys, we might actually be doing some winning this year.”

“Yeah, well,” Penkala muttered, “we ought to after the kamikaze training camp Sobel put us through. If I have to hear the words Heigh-ho Silver  _one more time_ …”

“You and us both, Penk.”

More and Blithe were sitting with them and not saying much of anything so much as forming a circle of gossip as they exchanged stories about Speirs and how it wasn’t _just_  the pitcher. He’d also once gone behind a coach’s back and drugged half of a team’s drinks with a laxative.

“I heard it was more like the whole team,” countered More. “He just snuck into the clubhouse and…” He mimed pouring into a drink. “The man is cold-blooded.”

“Seriously?” Malarkey echoed. “Did anyone actually  _see_  this?”

“I heard it from a guy who knows a guy,” Penk said with great authority.

“Yeah, and my cousin tells me he definitely knows his neighbor’s been tight with Speirs since they were tiny and Speirs was still evil,” Muck added pleasantly.

“Yeah, well, I heard he took his team and led two no-hitters and then a string of five undefeated games where he just humiliated the other guys,” More commented idly as he lit up his cigarette. “People said it was brutal.”

“I did see that,” Malarkey pointed out. “I was in the audience for three of those games. Swear to god, you could feel the emasculation even from the nosebleed seats!” He craned his neck to stare at Blithe, who just happened to be staring at the locker. “Earth to Blithe,” he commented. “You running scared from Speirs like the rest of these guys?”

“Just suppose,” Blithe started in a soft tone, “I just suppose I’m grateful he’s not coaching us.”

“Yeah, after Sobel, how the hell would we survive?”

“We’re Team E,” Muck said joyfully. “Come on! We thrive on pain!”

“Hey guys, practice in five,” Lipton announced, ducking his head into the change room, already fully-decked in his practice gear. It was a fully-known fact that Lipton was ahead of everyone, aware of everything, and seemingly capable of being fazed by nothing at all. It was just his Liptonian way of being.

Their state of preparation shifted and glided from lazy abandon into productive movement amidst the groans of many a man.

“Take me out to the ball game,” Luz sang loudly as he rattled lockers on his way out. “Take me out to the crowd. Torture me with thoughts of more PT, send me back to the training camp, me…” Voices joined along with him as they left the room, leaving only Blithe to sit there, staring at the lockers.

“You too, Blithe,” Lipton called from where he was still standing in the doorway.

Blithe glanced up with a weary smile. “I’m on my way.”

*

“So what do you think of the team?”

There were pictures with names attached to it, sitting on a table before the two men. Dick Winters was a legendary coach throughout the league and he had taken over the Express Team from Sobel when the team had threatened to walk out and rip up their contracts. It could have led them into court, but they’d been lucky they had threatened to do so just before opening week. Sink, the commissioner, had taken Sobel aside and made him a training coach and Winters had been brought in to coach the team in a vain attempt to retain the dignity of the league.

Nixon was the man who made the plays and was reclined with a bottle of booze in one hand and the team roster in the other. Half the time, he would leave the team wondering if his strokes of genius were from the man himself or produced from the fumes of VAT 69.

“Well, you sure picked a pretty bunch,” Nixon noted with a heavy dose of sarcasm, the lips of his glass hovering by his own pink lips, cheeks flushed by the reaction the alcohol was already causing. “Talent-wise? Hell, they weren’t much when they started, but a whole season of training camp with Sobel pretty much pounded out any ounce of lethargy they might have had.”

“You got a starting roster in mind?”

“Nah,” Nixon disagreed. “Gotta see them in action, first. That’s tomorrow, right? You’re putting them on show for me?”

“Soon as Compton and Welsh arrive,” Winters agreed simply, switching around several of the Polaroid pictures. “I’m thinking we’ll start Compton if he’s half as good as his press says. Besides which, none of the others like to play catcher generally. They’ll do it, but they’re not too well enamored by it.” Nix seemed to be tuning out of the speech, staring at each of the Polaroids that began to blur together on the board with each additional sip of booze. “Welsh, well, he’s got experience and I hear he’s a good leader if not a bit rowdy. The rest, I figure we’ll use Toccoa men, the ones who’ve been with the league longer, at least until we can sift out the talent…Nix, you aren’t listening.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking about bending you over the desk,” Nixon admitted frankly, gesturing with his glass to the thick oak table that adorned the hotel room’s penthouse. “Honestly, it’s a hard image to shake.”

There was a very long and silent pause.

“Nix…?”

“What?” Nixon cut him off with a brusque comment. “You, all that pale skin…”

“What have we talked about?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nixon muttered, swilling back the rest of his drink until he could down it. “No pleasure on business hours. But c’mon, Dick, it’s not like you can’t blame me. That thing could take you, me, and two of the team.”

“The orgy rule still applies,” Winters remarked very calmly. “And I’m beginning to think every time you get tipsy, you start to fantasize about orgies.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” Nixon replied as he turned and uncorked yet another bottle of the Vat. “Alright, c’mon, I can feel some genius approaching in the form of ethanol. Let’s get out some plays and strategies before I’m too far gone to do anything but undress you mentally.”

Winters didn’t say a word and it was probably for the best that neither of them made the obvious comment that Nixon was too far gone for that as it was.

*

Of the two team medics, both were currently hovering over Albert Blithe in an attempt to somehow inspect the damage done to his nose.

“Hm.”

“Yeah,” Spina agreed evenly, to Roe’s thoughtful murmur.

“What were you doing, Blithe? Ball was coming right to you, all you had to do was cover your face with the glove,” Roe muttered as he started to get out the gauze and the bandages necessary to patch up the injury.

“I tried, really, I did,” Blithe distantly spoke. “I just got a bit too much of the sun in my eyes and I couldn’t see. Next thing I knew. Well,” he admitted quietly. “Well, it hit me, right in the nose.”

“Is it broken?” came a foreign voice into the conversation and two of the three heads in the room turned to find Winters standing in the doorway with a concerned look on his face (which, really, was the default setting when it came to Richard Winters. He had a perpetual talent at looking gravely worried).

“Have to get some x-rays, but it’s looking like,” Roe assessed as he began to wrap bandages around his palm, eyes flickering up and down over Blithe’s face. “Sorry to say, but you’re out for the season.” He leaned back and washed his hands in the bowl of warm water brought in, shaking out the droplets as he stared up at Winters. “Sorry, Coach,” he said apologetically. “Looks like you need to call up one of the replacements.”

“Yeah,” Winters exhaled. “Yeah, I’ll make the call tonight. Get Blithe patched up,” he ordered as he wandered closer and clapped Blithe on the shoulder. “You okay there?”

“I just don’t want to disappoint anyone,” Blithe mumbled, so quietly that Winters could barely hear it, let alone the others.

“You didn’t,” Winters assured. “Now let’s get you healing, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

As he was shuffled out of the room, Winters turned to Roe and gave him a nod of his head. “Get me Nixon on the phone, tell him I’m headed to the hospital and he shouldn’t wait up for me. I’ll take good care of him, Doc, you just make sure you have all the supplies we might need.”

“Yessir,” Roe echoed and leaned over for his cell phone to do just as he was ordered.

So they were one man down and the season hadn’t even begun. Winters thought it seemed an auspicious start and wondered just what else was in store for them.

*

Lipton was waiting in the hotel lobby with the near-crumpled letter in his hand. If he took it out to open and close one more time, it might tremble into tiny pieces of tissue-paper, but he honestly couldn’t stop reading it over and over again. It wasn’t a very long letter, but it had been unexpected from the source.

Given the laconic quality of the man, Lipton hadn’t expected anything. To get the thirteen words (well, twelve words and one proper name) that he did almost seemed an honest-to-god miracle.

 _I’m sorry I slept with her,_  it read in the neatest, most controlled print a human being could muster.  _I still want to see you. –Ron_

Why he had consented to the meeting, Lipton still didn’t know but he figured that it couldn’t hurt to entertain his curiosity as to just how much begging a man like Ronald Speirs could do. Lipton might have even given a cool and confident smile to think of there being public witnesses to actual shows of emotion from the other man. Given the reputation he strived so hard to maintain, he might see something like weakening as akin to death.

He was also late, but Lipton wasn’t sure that had even been anything but a sure thing.

“Carwood,” an even voice announced from directly behind him and Lipton praised himself for not flinching at the fact that somehow, without anyone knowing, Speirs had managed to get within two inches of him and startle him the way he had. He turned and held himself with tight composure as he offered Speirs a very controlled smile. “You came,” Speirs observed with his usual lack of emotion in his tone.

“It was the decent thing to do,” Lipton said simply. “We have practice and I’m meant to be going over plays with Winters. We don’t have long.”

Whatever excuse Speirs had to present to Lipton, he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t about to sit there and buy it. The facts were simple. Lipton had been with a woman he loved very much, once upon a time and then he had met Ronald Speirs through her. They had instantly hit it off in the strange way people could become friends with Ron and so Lipton and his girlfriend slowly began a downward spiral until things became so hopeless that they both agreed they were better off apart.

Thus began the year and change that Ron and Carwood were together until…

“I guess saying we were drunk wouldn’t help?” Speirs offered.

Excuse number one. Lipton had been expecting that one.

Lipton had come home one evening to find the bedsheets already mussed, Ron lying in them with a cigarette between his lips and the shower occupied with his ex-girlfriend. There were only so many ways to interpret the scene and Lipton was a very smart man. To this day, he still was happy with the calmness of his reaction. He had done little but fold a pair of clothes for Speirs into a duffle bag, presented him with another outfit, and then tapped on the bathroom door to calmly inform Anne that Lipton was there, Speirs was just leaving, and if she wanted to see him to the door, that would be for the best.

“Ron, we have ten minutes,” Lipton simply informed him.

“She and I are old friends, you knew that,” he said quietly. “We got to talking about things like you, the season…we had a couple of drinks and she kissed me. Said she missed you, she was jealous of what I got.” Lipton remained stoic during the explanation, refusing to let an ounce of emotion betray his belief of the situation. The breakup with Anne had been amicable, really, because they couldn’t go on pretending they had something to last when half the time in bed, she cried the same name that he was thinking about. They had both been in love with the same man and Lipton had gotten him, in the end. “So she kissed me and I thought that it was some displaced desire for you.”

“It wasn’t,” Lipton assured.

Excuse number two was still under the guise of a story Anne had probably presented to Ron. Lipton didn’t know whether or not it was a comfort that he didn’t yet know the truth.

“Are you still together?”

“I asked you to meet me here,” Speirs said, voice clipped. His eyes kept darting around them, latching onto the concierge and the front desk clerks and Lipton knew the man well enough to know what that ticking sound in his head was saying.  _You have a reputation._  “I’m not with anyone because if I were with anyone, I’d prefer I’d be with you again.”

All Lipton wanted to say was ‘we have seven minutes now’.

It seemed Speirs’ need to maintain some persona for himself was going to win because Lipton could see the transformation as clear as day from human being to Something Else. His spine stiffened, his eyes went cold, and he turned on his heel and walked away without a single other word spoken.

They’d still had six minutes left.

He paused by the front desk, eyes skirting over the area and Lipton stayed a good distance away as he tried to gauge just what Speirs was about to do. “Do you have any matches?” he asked coolly. The clerk pressed a book of them into his palm and Speirs only looked back the once as he lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke in Lipton’s direction before leaving the hotel out the front door.

The note in Lipton’s pocket felt thinner than ever and Lipton wasn’t surprised. After that conversation, it might as well be nothing more than kindling considering all the good it had done.

 _Five minutes_. Time to get back to business.

*

Ed Heffron had once been christened ‘Babe’ and the name had never washed away, no matter how many times he’d taken a brush to it and scrubbed as hard as he possibly could. Once in a while, he’d get called ‘Edward’ by nuns at the church or the little old ladies in the grocery store. And, oddly enough, one of the medics he’d met during tryouts for the minor leagues.

He didn’t ever mention the part where he’d been lumped into a category of women who do (or oughta) wear veils.

He hadn’t made it past the final round of tryouts and so he’d put the minor league and the medic behind him, choosing instead to focus on a part-time gig while he worked on his skills so he could earn himself another shot, the next year.

He pried his visor off as he rounded the corner, finishing another delivery shift at the purchasing plant he’d been working at in South Philly when he heard the cry that sounded far too avian-like to be anyone but one old friend.

“Babe, where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Babe spun on his heel to find Bill Guarnere lurking on the corner of the block, looking him up and down (gaze lingering with disgust on that white and red visor in his hand, almost prompting Babe to make pre-emptive excuses). Babe couldn’t help his loud laugh as he immediately changed direction and embraced Bill, clapping him on the back. “The fuck are you doing here! I thought you were in California playing on Express.” He was still waiting on that fact to be rubbed in his face.

“Caught a plane so I could escort you back. Told Winters you couldn’t be trusted to come on your own.”

“Come again?”

“Jesus Christ,” Bill muttered under his breath, fishing around in Babe’s pockets and digging out his cell phone. “You’re a fucking moron, genius,” he said, flipping the phone open and turning it on for the first in days. “How about you keep this thing on so you can be there to answer the contracted offer to play for the team, huh? Couldn’t even tie your own shoes if it wasn’t for me, swear to god,” went the muttering, on and on. He flipped around the faceplate and shoved it right into Babe’s face. “Al Blithe got himself a broken nose, he’s out for the season. You’re in.”

Babe took the phone back into his own hands and gaped at the words. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I wouldn’t fly all this way for that when I could do it over the phone,” Bill assured him, cackling that unique laugh that only good ol’ Gonorrhea had and led him down the street. “C’mon, let’s get your bags packed. First game’s Monday and you’re the last sucker coming to join the team. Gotta get you acquainted with the boys, maybe play a round of darts, haze you a little…you know, the usual.”

“Yeah,” Babe weakly agreed. “The usual. I made the team. I made the team!”

“Yeah, well, by default.”

And that was good ol’ Bill, not letting him have anything without adding a swift little kick of…him-ness. There really was no other better way to explain it.

But Bill still had him corralled around the shoulders and was getting him back to his apartment in the city. “You got a lot of packing to do before you join a whole new world, Babe. Just you wait until you meet the boys, they’ll love you. Mostly cuz I’ll tell them to, but they’ll love you anyway!”

A broad grin on his face and a sturdy hand on his shoulder, Babe Heffron’s life was definitely changing for the better.  _Nuts to the delivery job_ , he thought.  _Minor leagues, here I come._

*

In general, there was a rule of the road when the team started booking up whole floors of motels and hotels that were probably too good to hold the likes of them. If you wanted privacy, you shut the door. If you were dumb enough to keep your door open, you could welcome all walks of the team into your room. Malarkey was in the latter camp as he made dinner from the small kitchenette in his room, not sure if he’d just made stew or some kind of chili or maybe just a meat dish. Or maybe all three, you could never know, not really.

“Something die in here?” a warm voice called out past the threshold of the doorway. Malarkey glanced up from trying to loosen the wooden spoon from his delicacy to see one of the newest team members, transferred in during the draft ( _this guy was first pick_ , his mind decided to mercilessly taunt in Malarkey’s direction). Compton, wasn’t it? Lynn, something.

“It’s good cooking.”

“Yeah, if you’ve got no sense of smell,” he countered, but was striding into the room anyway, as if he owned the place. “I’m Buck Compton. The new guy,” he said with such relish that Mal had the feeling he’d been saying that often. “Came in with Welshie just this afternoon, taking a tour of the place. Of course, that was before I had to come in and check that nothing was being ritually sacrificed in here,” he joked warmly. He slid into one of the chairs as if he’d been invited to do and started to toy with a fork. “So, gonna feed me or am I just gonna sit here and complain about the service?”

“Aren’t you newbies supposed to be earning our respect and friendship?” Malarkey wondered aloud as he spooned ladles filled with stew into the bowls on the table.

Buck just shrugged and caught Malarkey’s gaze, some kind of sparkle there that could shine down planes from thirty-thousand feet in the air. “Yeah, but I never purported to be normal.”

Somehow they went from joking around to having a meal together while Buck complained and bitched loudly about the absolute rank taste of the stew while barely avoiding the pieces of it being flung in the direction of his face.

By the end of the night, Buck was sprawled lazily on the chair with a couple of glasses of beer in him and he was saluting the vague area around the table. “So,” he began, lightly pounding a hand to his chest ‘to help with indigestion’ he’d said ‘after that kinda Irish cooking’. “Team E, good guys?”

“The best in the world,” Malarkey swore, cleaning up plates by shoving them in a pile to be taken to the sink later. “You’re gonna have to live up to that reputation of yours if you want to fit in.”

“Reputation?” Buck echoed with a bemused look in his eyes.

“You’d think you were baseball Jesus, the way these guys talk about you, just because you played a while in Europe,” Malarkey confirmed.

“Christ, the Germans may be the most efficient bastards on a field, but I don’t think the caliber’s  _that_  different,” Buck muttered as he reached for the plates that Malarkey had piled, groaning as he pushed his way to his feet and dumped the plates into the sink, turning to find Malarkey bringing over some of the empty glasses, darting to the left and dodging to the right to avoid Buck.

Their coordination was sadly a mess from too much alcohol in their systems and by the time Malarkey got them in the sink, they were both a laughing mess, Buck steadying himself with a hand on Mal’s shoulder.

Somehow, though, when every piece of dishware and cutlery was removed from their hands, they managed to find some kind of coordination because Malarkey wound up with his back pinned to the wall and Buck’s tongue halfway down his throat and both men doubted they could blame a couple of half-glasses of beer on this.

But then, did they really need an excuse when it felt like that?

Buck’s hand groped for Malarkey’s hip and tugged him away from the wall and towards the bedroom and Malarkey thought that no, no they very well didn’t need to excuse anything, especially when this was going the way it was.

*

There had been a kamikaze-like sprint for the front doors when phone-calls went around the hotel in synchronous glory and everyone knew that dinner was twenty minutes or bust. Several players begged out, wanting to ‘mentally prepare’ or whatever it meant when Lipton said that. As for the rest, they’d loaded up into the various rental cars they had brought or the individual heaps that had been driven to the hotel to transport from city to city for the season.

Shotgun was possibly the second most serious thing that was dealt with on Team Express (the first being a tie between getting laid and being a starter). “Shotgun!” Muck and Malarkey announced at the same time and then wound up struggling in childish immaturity as Talbert dug the keys out of his pocket and strolled around the front.

It wouldn’t matter who called shotgun because they wound up having to pile two in the front seat to save space, anyway. The rest of the team was already in the car and waiting for seatbelts to somehow conform to the human pretzels they made.

“Come on, let’s get going,” Malarkey was bitching as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat (which also happened to shove a hand against Muck’s stomach). “Where’s Lieb?”

“Not coming,” Tab commented from the driver’s side of the jeep, fiddling with the radio to get a mix CD loaded. “C’mon, buckle up already.”

By the time they were finished arranging themselves, a half of the starting lineup were squishing into seats and too-thin frames balanced out too-broad ones as they started making their way to the local restaurant for a night of drinks before they had to be a helluva lot more covert about imbibing.

“Where’s Joe got to, now?” asked Penkala.

“It’s the third week of the month,” said Muck.

“The  _Journal_  came out this morning,” added Guarnere.

“Where do you  _think_  he is?” finished off Martin.

Babe was looking around the vehicle in complete confusion, blinking owlishly. He was the newcomer to the team, in to replace Blithe who was out with some kind of hysterical blindness and a broken nose. Babe was an old friend of Bill’s from the same neighborhood and they’d called him up to replace Blithe. Now, he was a member of the team and yet, not even close to understanding all the inside jokes.

Martin gestured to Bill, as if giving him permission to explain it. “Every month, this journalist…”

“Webster,” Tab interjected.

“This Webster guy,” Bill continued, “writes about the minor leagues. He and Joe, I dunno, they got into some fight ages back, so now every time the third week of the month rolls around, there’s some jibe at Lieb in the article. This month is something like how he likes to tramp it up around town and he can’t field for shit. Anyway, every month Joe heads on down there to take it out on Webster.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Well, it only feels like forever,” piped up Muck from the trunk of the jeep, where he and Malarkey were crammed in, Penk nearly breathing down their necks from the back seat. “But realistically? Six months. We’ve got a pool going as to what started it…”

“Not to mention how it’ll break,” Penkala added helpfully.

With that, Tab leaned over to blast the music in the car. It would have been fine if he hadn’t just put on…

“Oh, come on!” Martin protested with a sharp sound.

“The fuck are we listening to this for?”

“God, Talbert, you girl,” Penkala added his disgusted mutterings.

Talbert said absolutely nothing of his penchant for blasting Sarah McLachlan as loudly as he could in the car. As he had once explained to Grant over too-many-drinks one night,  _If you want women to want you, you have to be sensitive and there is nothing more sensitive than that woman wailing. Plus, they eat it up when you play it during sex._  And plus, driver got to pick the music.

*

Every week, David Webster wrote an article for the newspaper in the sports section about the current players, teams, games, and things to watch. Every third week of the month, he chronicled the minor league baseball teams and it seemed that without fail, every third week of the month, there would be some sly little slight against one Joseph Liebgott, second baseman for the Express.

And every month for the last six, Joe made it a habit to storm into the quiet offices of the  _Journal_  and slam a copy of the paper down on Webster’s waiting desk.

“You think my fielding is sloppy and my off-field behavior is a fucking disgrace to the old players of the game?” Joe was already seething. “The fuck is wrong with your eyesight? I’m a perfect fucking gentleman. And I’m anything but sloppy, you were probably just mistaking me for your own writing.”

Webster barely glanced up from his computer, still typing away at the keys. The office was as good as deserted and it brought the question to mind over ‘what was Webster there so late for?’ One needed to only think about the fact that for the last six months, Joe had come to protest at the exact same time.

Maybe, just maybe, Webster had fit Joe into his schedule.

“It’s just an article,” Webster commented with that constant annoying calm he had, the one that pissed Joe off the most because he liked getting a rise out of the other man and he hadn’t been able to for almost two months now. It was almost like he was running out of gambits. “Besides,” Webster added, voice taking on a heavy tone of annoyance. “I didn’t exactly make up the part where you were traipsing around the pre-season party with a hooker on your arm.”

“She was my  _date_!”

“And what’d she cost you?” Webster bit back. “Look, I’ll quit writing about your antics soon as you stop  _having_  them.”

“I think you’re just obsessed with me,” Joe retorted, tone cruel. “It’s about the only reason I can figure that you’re so desperately sniffing at my heels that you need to make up lies just to get me to come down here and set them right.”

“I never asked you to come down here.”

“Yeah, well,” Joe said with a broad grin, somehow tinged with nefarious intent. Somehow, he had gained control of the conversation. “Bet you were wishing it in that pretty-boy head of yours.”

Webster gave Joe a dubious glare as he shuffled and reshuffled his papers, pushing out of his chair and lifting up a sheath of papers, as if using them as an excuse. “I’m working,” he clarified.

“What, so this mean we’re not going out for our usual drink?” Joe asked, now sounding both caustic and slightly bitter. After the fight they had, it tended to spill over to the bar where one or the other would buy rounds (only to be evened out the month after) and the arguing would typically continue over a pint of something and a bowl of nuts. Eventually, one of them would drink too much and have to be brought home by the other.

For nemeses, they just happened to have a very comfortable drinking routine down pat.

“So what is it, Web? You too busy or you here because you were expecting me?” Joe asked, taking full control of the conversation.

Webster sighed heavily. “Give me fifteen minutes to finish this text and we’ll go downstairs.”

“It’s on you, this month.”

Webster could only sit there staring at his screen, ignoring Joe Liebgott, and trying to imagine just what it could possibly be like to win an argument with Joe. At least they were drinking on his tab this month and he could stop the bartender from pouring eight shots of the vilest concoction behind the bar (as they had done last month).

Fifteen minutes later – nearly exact to the moment – Webster grasped his coat and shot a glare in Joe’s direction. “Admit you paid for her.”

“Fuck that,” Joe scowled. “I got her free. She’s my second cousin.”

“God, Joe,” Webster remarked with disdain. “Only you could make the situation somehow worse.”

*

“Alright, boys, let’s go another round,” Buck announced as he leaned over to collect the cards and start shuffling them in his hands, adept at the habit by now. The table was filled with the dour faces of men who were not very pleased to still be playing, especially when they were losing so adamantly and especially since the stakes had nothing to do with money at all, but instead were the very shirts off their back.

Shifty was clothed nearly head to toe. The man had perfect aim with his throw and a helluva case of modesty that happened to go along with everything he did, even when that included smoking the rest of the guys at poker. In this case, Wild Bill, Malarkey, and Muck were all currently losing to Shifty and Buck in turns with the occasional lucky streak from Malarkey here and there.

“Fucking Irish,” Bill cursed as he folded yet another round. “Goddamn leprechaun tucked in your fucking pocket to give you luck.”

“Just be glad we’re not playing for money, then!” Malarkey announced as he leaned over the table to collect the cards and not even bothering to hide his gleeful smile while the others had to pick yet another item of clothing to remove. They were too broke to actually gamble with cash and they had made a bet that whoever got down to the full show first was going to have his picture taken for immortal humiliation. At that point in the evening, the boys were playing on a warm stomach of alcohol and a heavy helping of pride that refused to let them just walk out on the game.

They were still in the first hotel of many for the season and the door to the hall was open, letting in the sounds of all the other rooms. It was Saturday night and the first game wasn’t until Monday and each of the players was soothing sore muscles from intense practices in whatever way they thought best.

The round that Malarkey had won forced Muck and Bill very nearly almost into nudity and behind them were the whispers of more bets as to which one was about to go full pickle first and have the very first Polaroid of the season taken of their naked glory.

Smart money was on Muck, who got too easily distracted when playing.

Buck passed cigarettes around the room, lighting them up as he did and taking the time to stare at Malarkey’s lips for a long moment before he dealt out the cards. “And,” he said over his shoulder to Luz, who happened to be taking the bets. “Twenty on Muck losing his shirt. Literally.”

“You got it, Buck,” Luz confirmed, scribbling it in his notebook. “Last call! Last call to bet against Muck.”

“This is possibly one of the most demeaning experiences ever,” Muck announced, clothed only in a wifebeater and his boxers (but, he would protest, the lint between his toes ought to count for  _something_ ). “Hey Luz,” he called out cheerfully. “Fifty on me to lose.”

“Jesus, Muck, way to obliterate the odds,” Babe complained sharply, fingers counting through the cash immediately pausing to shoot a dirty glare in the man’s direction.

The cards were dealt, the turn was made and the river was revealed and …

“Muck won,” Babe noted with absolute shock. “Fuck. That’s a flush. Muck  _won_.”

“I’ll be taking all that money,” Malarkey announced as he leaned back in his diminished outfit with a hand grabbing for the money that he had just claimed as officially his. He had, in fact, been the only one to bet  _for_  Muck. The stunned looks on everyone’s faces were enough to confirm that he definitely was the only one who believed such a thing was possible.

“That’s gotta be…”

“Three grand?” Malarkey chirped. “Yup!”

There was a general air of dismay around and people watched as everyone else removed a layer of clothing (with a catcall here and there for Shifty and Buck, who were finally ridding themselves of their shirts, and there might have even been a ‘looking hot, Buck’ from an unnamed third party who happened to be redheaded and very Irish).

The cards were pushed to Shifty, who was in the midst of putting on a good show of shuffling, and the rest of the table were all staring at Muck as if trying to will him to lose before a single card was even dealt.

“Hey,” Muck protested, kicking his ankles up on the table. “I’m just saying, when it comes to self-preservation, I can be one sly man. I ever tell you about the time I swam…”

“Across the Niagara, yeah, we heard it,” Penk piped up from the peanut gallery.

“Let’s go again,” Shifty announced in his subdued voice, tinged with just the slightest edge of bemusement. The next hand, however, was interrupted by the door to the room being knocked on and opened, a half-drunk Joe Liebgott staggering through the room.

“There he is!” Muck announced with glee. “We didn’t think we’d see you when you bailed on dinner.” Liebgott wandered in and gave a cocky half-there grin. “Well, you tore him a new one?”

“He’s not printing a retraction,” Liebgott slurred as he dropped into a chair. “Eh, I’ll get the fuck over it, he bought me like, ten drinks while he tried to convince me that I have to appear civilized for the sake of the league or some shit like that.” At that, Luz and Perconte shot a Look at each other over the room, but didn’t say a word (as was the case with many of the Looks exchanged at that sentence). “Muck’s losing, huh?”

“Strategically lulling everyone into a sense of security,” Muck corrected.

“Call it whatever you want. Twenty on Muck losing this round,” Liebgott announced, digging out a bill that smelled heavily of cigars and beers.

By the end of the night, they all knew,  _someone_  was going to have a Polaroid photo of them that was bound to haunt them for the rest of the season.

*

The hangovers were rife the next morning for some, but thankfully for Buck’s sake, he escaped one only to be quietly invited to a morning meeting with Lipton, Nixon, and Winters.

“Thanks for coming, boys,” Sink announced as he closed the heavy door behind him. “This is the ninth meeting I’ve taken today and I’ve saved you boys for last because goddammit, if anyone’s capable of doing this league some justice, it’s the Express,” he said with a direct nod to Winters.

Nixon was there as well and they both sat in chairs, flanked by Buck and Lipton – both unofficially the elected team captains – and waiting for Sink to say what reason they had for the sudden meeting in the middle of the season.

“Is something wrong?” Nixon fielded the obvious question that  _someone_  had to ask.

“The boys up at the top are thinking of shutting down the league based on poor seat sales from last year, poor performance in the pre-season clinics, and the new inter-continental division’s record. Germany’s taking gold and we’re playing like we haven’t got it in us to have an ounce of talent,” Sink muttered in complaint.

There was a very long moment of silence as Sink’s words hit home.

“Sir, are you implying that the division will be folded?” Winters clarified calmly.

The others were currently embarked in a competition to see which of them could look the most concerned about their futures. The minor league didn’t pay amazingly, but a steady job was something to be envied in the current economic climate and for most of the men, it was their sole marketable skill. There were other avenues for some of them (Joe Liebgott liked to drive cabs in the off-season to supplement income and Buck took courses where he could), but their first devotion was baseball.

“The divisions we have will be compiled into one assembly of three teams,” Sink agreed, “if we can’t show that there’s a reason to keep baseball on US soil without having to invite international teams into the division.”

“And how is it we’re expected to change this?” Nixon was clarifying with a single finger raise in the air to protest the point. He sounded vaguely cynical and his sharp laugh didn’t help that very much. “I mean, we coach them, we give ‘em plays, they win, we go to the next city.”

“Can’t ask you to do anything more than that,” Sink admitted. “We’ll get some marketing boys on it, try and use Express as the face of this league. You boys are our best bet.”

(Later, Buck would relay the news to some of the others and would joke with a ‘We’re the prettiest, too’, to which Lipton would very demurely agree in his own way).

“Anyhow, try and talk up the team and for god’s sake, win some games,” Sink advised firmly. “Last thing I need is for the pinnacle of the league to start crapping out.”

“We’ll do our best, sir,” Nixon replied mock-cheerfully, earning a mild cuff from Winters’ that was only visible to Lipton and Buck from behind. “That is to say,” he went on, more serious, “We’ll get right on the issue.”

“We won’t let you down,” Winters assured calmly.

He ushered the other members of Express out of the room and they stood in a four-way huddle out in the hallway for a very long moment, everyone looking to their left and to their right to see if anyone had any sudden bright ideas.

“I’ll call a buddy up in publication for Sports Illustrated,” Buck assured simply. “We’ll talk to the local papers about more coverage.”

“We can co-brand,” Lipton suggested with a simple nod. “Get some sponsorship that can line the coffers.”

“Hell, why not have them do some local spokesperson crap,” Nixon added, putting away his flask as he reconvened with the others. “I’m sure there’s some local product or national something or other that needs endorsement.”

“We’ll double-time PT for the next few days,” Winters confirmed, after giving each suggestion a very firm nod. “Get everyone into fighting shape so we’re giving the show that fans want when they come to the plate. Buck, Lip. Would the boys be okay with doing meet and greets after?”

“Throw in some beautiful women and I don’t see why they wouldn’t be,” Buck confirmed with a warm smile. “We’ll tell ‘em before we run the practice.”

“Good,” Winters murmured, a distracted look in his eyes as the wheels in his mind seemed to be churning at full speed. “Good,” he said once more, sounding more cogent of his surroundings. “I’m not going to lose a single member because we lack the ability to perform. Let’s go to it.”

*

“So, what, the league’s in trouble?” Malarkey was questioning as he slopped a good serving of food to the couple of guys who were forming their own impromptu committee after Buck and Lipton had clued them in as to what was going on. Buck had stayed behind and Luz was there with Liebgott, Bull, Martin, Bill and Babe (Babe had yet to really part from Bill’s side, out of some need to cling). “Like we haven’t been busting our asses in practice!”

“Haven’t sold enough seats for the opener, Mal,” Buck said simply.

“So we’re deep in shit,” Martin summarized bluntly, crossing his arms over his body and exchanging a look with Bull (who had yet to take out his cigar and put it out, even if the hotel instituted a fairly strict no-smoking policy that was avoided by always keeping a window open in the brisk autumn weather). “What’s the plan?”

“A lot of corporate this and that,” Buck admitted. “Meet and greets with fans. Peak performance, so you boys can expect double-timing it on practice.”

“Like we aren’t already the best team in the league?” Liebgott bitched, ducking his head from outside the window, cigarette dangling outside as he flicked away the ash. “Not that you’d know we were any good the way Webster trashes us.”

“What ‘us’,” Luz echoed. “That’s all you, Joe. He loves me. Calls me a shining example of old-style charisma and style to the new game,” he boasted. “I mean, so he won’t drive in the same car with me after I very nearly crashed us that one Christmas, but hey, who’s perfect?”

“Sorry, Lieb,” Bull drawled lazily. “Only one he beats up regularly is you.”

“He’s not wrong about your fielding lately,” Buck pointed out mildly. “You’re treating the game like you’ve got something else on your mind.”

All he got for his efforts was the finger before Joe ducked his head under the window and leaned out the window to resume smoking his cigarette.

With Liebgott out of the conversation, the rest turned back to their conversation as Malarkey lit up a cigarette and passed it to Buck to be shared, giving him a waggle of eyebrows that Buck seemed to return with a nod of his head. “We’re heading out for a smoke,” Buck offered. “Don’t let the boys get too panicky. It’s a tough situation and a rough spot, but there’s only so much we can do.”

He left the room, Malarkey on his tail and the rest of the men lingered in the room, shaking their heads.

“I can’t believe I could be out of a job just because the league’s too cheap to pay for us during a downswing,” Martin complained heavily, leaning over to grab his glove and one of the team’s softballs that they used for some of the lighter catching practice. “Bull. Come on, I gotta throw something around before I go down there and punch a couple of faces.”

“Hold your horses, Johnny,” Bull announced, stubbing out his cigar as he groaned and wandered inside. “I’m coming.” He craned his head to the side. “You boys feel like having an impromptu game?”

“Nah, promised Web I’d grab a drink with him,” Luz offered with an apologetic shrug.

Liebgott heavily rolled his eyes. “I hate that you’re all so buddy-buddy with him, you know that?” he muttered under his breath. “Thought you were supposed to be loyal to the team.”

“Yeah, but he gets me free passes to the Sports Illustrated parties,” Luz pointed out. “Models, Joe.  _Models_. And the guy’s not so bad,” he protested. “I mean, he was nearly in the league until he decided to go write.”

“Like I haven’t heard that a dozen times from  _him_ ,” Liebgott muttered. “Fine, go on. Have your martinis or whatever the fuck you girls drink. We’re going to play. Right? Bill? Babe?”

“Yeah, we’re in,” Babe agreed, already wandering out the room.

Liebgott held down Luz’s stare for a long moment, not even bothering to put out his cigarette as he cradled it between his lips and exhaled a puff of smoke in the air, shaking his head at Luz as if disappointed.

“Whatever,” Luz muttered to his back as he went. “Just cuz he won’t let you screw him into submission,” he added under his breath when there was no fear of recrimination from the older man. He swooped down to pick up one of the abandoned packs of cigarettes, a random set of car keys (he’d return whoever’s it was) and headed out to meet Webster at the bar.

*

Babe had been forcibly parted from Bill when he was sent to do the team’s laundry at the nearby laundromat because ‘new guy does it’, Welsh had explained with a shit-eating grin (a cigarette dangling past his lips), ‘and I’ve got a date with Kitty’. He was the new guy by all of eight hours and yet he was the one carrying around four full duffel bags of practice gear.

“Jesus Christ,” Babe muttered as he yanked another zipper loose. He honestly didn’t think people could  _sweat_  as much as they did and yet, here was the evidence otherwise. He held the bag as far as humanly possible away from his face, shoving Hoobler’s crap along with everyone else’s into the wash and sitting on the machine to keep it from walking.

All he even had with him to read was a bunch of comics that Liebgott had loaned him.

He barely even heard someone talking to him until the very last minute because of the constant stream of profanity running through his mind.

“…said, are you using this?” said the voice, seeming almost distant to Babe, who was in his own little world. When Babe glanced up, he found himself drawing in a laugh before he broke and let out a sharp guffaw because of all the people it could be, here he was sitting before Mr. ‘Only Calls Me Edward’ Roe.

Babe grinned broadly, kicking the washer that he was sitting on lightly with his heel. “What, this thing? You could open it, but the combined smell of sweat and soap might knock you out.” He just hoped whatever lame jokes he could muster would distract him from the noticing of the way Roe’s face was knit together in concern, as if even doing laundry gave him something to think about.

“Got the medics gear to do before we get on the road,” Roe offered, taking a step to the right to load up the nearest washer, which meant that he was there to stay.

Babe wasn’t sure if he was thrilled, anxious, or some combination of a lot of fucking strange emotions.

They were headed to North California in a couple of days for the first game and the team buses were already lurking in the lot of the hotel, prompting a general air of anticipation to go along with the stomach-sickening news that the league might be out of money soon enough and they’d all be shut down but for one team. One team and Babe was just a replacement. He didn’t have a hope in hell of making it onto some version of All Stars that just wasn’t called as much.

“You drew the short straw for laundry?”

“Not so much that as Joe Toye told me you were here,” Roe answered, not even skirting his gaze away as he replied, looking at Babe. “I was glad to hear you’re replacing Blithe, seeing as you headed off with Bill the night I was trying to talk to you.”

That night was still a blur to Babe. All he remembered was a bar, booze, and too many broads around. It was a formula for success, as Bill liked to say.

“You were trying to talk me up?” Babe blurted out suddenly before realizing that maybe Roe didn’t mean it  _exactly_  like that. “Shit. I mean, talk to me. Fuck, I didn’t mean to imply you were hitting on me or anything.” Not that he would have minded, coming from a guy like Gene Roe. Yeah, so maybe he wasn’t about to give it up to just anyone on the team. Hell, even Bill was a territory he didn’t want to venture into for exploratory purposes. And yeah,  _yeah_ , he liked women just fine. He just didn’t think many men would have it in them to reject Roe if he showed the slightest bit of interest in them. The man was beautiful in his own way and the whole ‘healing of the hands’ thing got Babe going in a way he sort-of hoped other men felt. So yeah, maybe he’d bend happily for Roe in a couple of ways.

Roe seemed somewhat bemused by Babe’s inability to be smooth as some of the other guys on the team and he internally cursed them for not letting him pick it up via osmosis.

“So uh, what’d you want to talk to me about?” Babe managed, trying to jump headfirst back into the topic that he’d derailed.

“Just wanted to talk,” Roe assured as he closed the door of the washer and gave Babe such a long look, so intense, that maybe he was starting to wonder if he had something on his cheek that he’d forgotten about somewhere. But the look ended and the silence began all over again. “So you come from Philly…”

“South Philly, just like Bill,” he provided with a nod.

“Hear it’s a nice place.”

“It’ll do, but here’s better,” Babe replied easy enough and didn’t feel he had to explain whether he meant ‘here’ as in California or the more specific ‘here’ of the laundromat. “’Sides, it’s not like Philly’s so great soon as November rolls around, y’know? Gimme California any day.”

“Sounds like you got a plan for yourself, Edward.”

Babe flinched because every time he heard that goddamn name, he thought of nuns and their rulers waiting to smack a wrist here and there. It figured that the last Catholic school in his hometown was still run by strict nuns who had no patience for his ‘hair of the devil’ and ‘mouth of a demon’. Here Babe had just been trying to have a good time.

“Everyone just calls me Babe, you know,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’m not everyone,” was Roe’s quiet reply, tinged with the smallest bit of a smile on his lips. “So tell me about home…”

And with that, Babe launched into a conversation that spanned almost hours and felt like he had hardly been with the other man for minutes.

*

Practice started promptly at seven in the morning on the field so as to avoid the worst heat of the mid-day and second practices began at four in the afternoon. It was six twenty-seven when a loud set of crashing noises woke both Richard Winters and Lewis Nixon from their sleep in one shared king bed.

“I didn’t touch your booze!” Nixon swore immediately as he roused, voice addled with a hangover and exhaustion. His eyes darted around the room and, finding nothing truly threatening, he fell right back to sleep with a muttered, ‘damn raccoons’.

Winters was not so easy to be sent back to sleep and slid into hotel slippers as he palmed a key card and tugged on a team shirt, walking in the direction of all the noise.

Lightly, he tapped on one of the open doors where all the noise appeared to be coming from and poked his head inside to find a mess of a man on the floor, swearing to himself and picking leaves from off himself. “Harry,” Winters deadpanned. “Why did you come in using the window? You know you have a door, right?”

Harry stumbled heavily and it took him approximately twenty-two steps before he found his way to the bed, the path swerving and curving all around.

And not once in his walk did he stop grinning lasciviously at Winters.

“Hey Dick,” he offered giddily, a giggle to his lips as he reached across his bed to grasp a cigarette. “Guess I forgot about that.”

While the men weren’t supposed to be drinking, it wasn’t as if he could say anything and have it stick with the way Nix liked to drink and so he’d made it clear that they would not be excused from practice unless they were suffering the very grave illness of death or missing a limb.

“Harry, you’re drunk,” Winters observed.

“And you’re redheaded. I’m good at this game,” Harry indicated with a slaphappy grin. “This state the obvious one.” He closed his eyes as if pretending to summon up suspense and lifted up a finger to the air. “I’m drunk and in love, you’ve got red hair and don’t touch a drop of booze, and Nix touches enough for twenty men and you still love the man. How’m I doing?”

Winters might have also been more cross with Harry if they weren’t old friends and went back to the times when they used to run spring training camp with each other. While Winters had gone into coaching, Harry had opted to stay within the league and play. That he knew he was in love with Lewis Nixon was something of old news and he crossed the room as he uncrossed his arms, sinking down onto the bed beside Harry and watching him suck at his cigarette like it was more than just that.

“I love Kitty,” Harry announced again, shaking his head as if the very voicing of such a statement was shocking. “I tell you yet? If we somehow evade closing down the league, I’m gonna propose. I’ve got the stone for the ring from the tour we all took in the Rockies last year, when we were in Colorado and I found that hunk of gold.”

“You’re a lucky man, Harry.”

“No shit,” Harry agreed. “How I got a girl like Kitty to look past my teeth, I’ll never know.” He groaned as he lay flat on his back in the bed. “Fuck me, Dick, are you actually saying I have to practice in twenty minutes. I’m  _clearly_ ,” he announced with a lazy laugh, “still drunk.”

“Well, that’s your own fault.”

“Kitty’s fault,” Harry corrected, a nostalgic grin on his face. “She’s coming down tonight so she can ride on the bus and cheer us on up in the north. We uh,” he burst into soft laughter, the love for that woman clear in his eyes, “we played a little game of truth and dare. …incidentally, that’s probably why you’re going to have Tab complaining that we gave out his room number, why Luz is probably livid that his smokes are missing.”

“And the window?”

“The what?”

“Does that explain the window?” Winters asked patiently.

Harry craned his neck to stare at the window he had crawled in through, as if stunned by its sudden presence there. “I almost wish it did, but I really did forget I wasn’t back at Kitty’s parents’ place.” He glanced clock-wards, which read 6:37 and groaned loudly. “Have mercy on me, Dick,” he pleaded. “Let me sit this one out.”

“I could do that,” Winters provided, “but I might need to get Nix to break your legs just so the others don’t think they can sleep around all night, drink it up, and still start. You’ll be lucky if I get you on the roster for the first game.”

“Yeah, but she’s worth it,” Harry said with a blissful smile on his lips. “I’ll be there, but hey, if I puke on Lip’s leg…”

“He’ll probably forgive you and find you a hangover cure within minutes,” Winters assured easily, clapping Harry tightly on the shoulder before getting to his feet. “Good luck staying vertical Harry.”

He got a mumbled and completely incoherent string of words in reply, which only made Winters grin a little broader. He rose to his feet and closed the door behind him before sliding back into his own room and into the bed with Nixon. It didn’t take him very long at all before Nix roused enough to drape an arm across Winters’ waist with a smack of skin on skin.

“Who was it?” Nixon asked tiredly.

“Harry,” Winters replied, prying Nix’s arm off of him. “Time to get up, Nix. We have to be at the field in five.”

“So I’ll see you there in fifteen?” Nixon interpreted with a sleepy mumble as he turned over and adjusted his pillow, already snoring by the time Winters could respond with a positive. He gave a slight rub of Nixon’s chest lightly and patted there before getting up to change into his official coach’s gear.

“See you there, Nix.”

*

Winters had taken another meeting with Sink only one week after the first. This time, however, he wasn’t toting Lipton and Buck with him and Nixon wasn’t called to be there. It was just a meeting of the two of them and he had walked out with a sudden promotion that he didn’t recall asking for or wanting. He knocked lightly on the door of the room Nixon was in at the hotel (well, that  _they_  were in, but for the purposes of booking and team inquiries, Winters’ was in the suite next door).

“You survived,” Nixon observed, barely glancing up from his paper. “And here I thought you were marching to your doom. How’d it go?”

“Not exactly as I anticipated,” he admitted, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. He took a long moment to compose himself before prying off both shoes and socks, clearing his throat. “Express will have a new coach as of next month and I’m being promoted up to league supervisor. Sink thinks I have it in me to monitor all the teams and make sure we’re making a positive impact and improvement.”

“You do have it in you,” Nixon observed, turning in his chair to stare at Winters, tucking the pencil in behind his ear. “Is this you before you throw a fit or is this just the fit itself and I’ve gotten really bad at reading you?”

“He’s replacing me with Ron Speirs,” Winters announced, a look on his face that said to Nixon that he wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling about the whole thing. “I’m being replaced.”

“Technically, you’re being promoted,” Nixon clarified as he pushed himself up from his seat, plunking down on the bed beside Winters and grinning cheerfully at him as he wiggled the flask in his direction. “Hell, I think this calls for a celebration drink.”

“No thanks.”

“I’ll drink for the both of us,” Nixon assured, taking a swift chug as he draped one arm around Winters’ shoulders. “So, what’s the deal?”

“I get one month left with the boys and then you officially have a new co-coach to work with.”

He pried the glass of alcohol out of Nixon’s hands and slowly went about methodically pinning him to the bed as the slow dawn of an epiphany wound its way into Nixon’s head and he stared at Winters with a knit forehead. “Hold on.”

“Yeah?”

“This means you won’t be here all the time.”

“I was wondering when that’d hit you,” Winters commented with the beginnings of wry bemusement to his tone. “No, I won’t be on the road with you anymore. I’ll be at headquarters down in Los Angeles with occasional visits out to the host cities, but I won’t be on the road in a dedicated fashion anymore, which means you’d better learn to sleep on your own,” he added as a casual afterthought. There was more to his tone than just the inklings of barely-there concern and it was in Winters’ eyes that all the words were kept about how much he would miss the nights spent in and the quiet conversations or the way Nixon got in one of his Vat 69 fueled moods.

Like right then, when his knee happened to be doing very pleasing things to the inseam of Winters’ thigh.

“Speirs,” Winters continued, voice shaking as he exhaled a weary breath, “will be stepping in immediately to inherit coaching duties and to let the men grow accustomed to his style.”

“Kamikaze baseball?” Nixon suggested with a wicked look in his eyes and his knee began to drift higher than before. If he was having a crisis about the notion of not having Winters around on a permanent basis, it hadn’t sunk fully into home plate just yet. “I’m sure they’ll be ready to cry Uncle within days of his practices.”

“They’re made of stronger stuff than you give them credit for,” Winters insisted, that possessive flare rushing through him.

“Yeah, I know, you’re a real Momma Bear about them. Dick, can we shut up and get to the sex, now?”

“Whatever the two of you do,” came from the other side of the wall, distinctly in Harry Welsh’s tone, “can you remember that the walls are paper thin?”

“So I shouldn’t call Kitty’s name?” Nix shouted back.

“Only if you’re reaching for stars you can’t get, Nix.”

Nixon might have argued further on the point if it wasn’t for the fact that Winters was giving him a very bemused and a  _very_  expectant look, shifting his weight just down enough to cause a slight bit of friction.

“Lew will get back to you later, Harry,” Winters calmly commented. “Keep what you heard to yourself, will you?”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.”

“Now, where were we?” Winters suggested in a far quieter tone, that expectantly-bemused look shifting to something far, far more suggestive.

*

The bar they drank in while at their Northern California stop was three-tiered and noisy and the E team had taken over the upper echelons without a word spoken. It was just how they operated. Now that they had more pull with the municipalities they were playing in, all it took was a mention that they would be there and strings would be pulled.

It was one of those nights when things started to get more complicated.

“Excuse me,” Webster muttered, inching past people and ascending the stairs to the top level of the club, standing with the bouncer and leaning in to mumble something into his ear, pressing a handful of bills into his hand and gliding right past, only stopping when he arrived at Liebgott’s side, grabbing hold of his wrist and yanking him away from the loud conversation he was having with Toye and Guarnere.

“What the fuck?” Liebgott nearly howled. “Webster, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Webster opened his mouth to speak, hesitating when Toye and Guarnere started to close in. He’d met each and every one through interviews, press junkets, and the times he did socialize with Team Express, but he had no desire to let them in on why he was there and what Joe had done, considering he didn’t think it was something that you talked about with your team.

He cleared his throat and when he launched into his fervent plea, he made sure each and every word was in German (a language he knew he and Joe both shared a working knowledge of, seeing as they had conducted full arguments in German before just to prove that they could).  _“You have to get out of here. Now. You can stay at my place._ ”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Joe hissed, yanking Webster away to the side.

“ _You’re about to be arrested for assault. You think that’ll look good on a front page? Come on.”_  The news had been broken only hours ago that Joseph D. Liebgott was wanted for assault against a fan who had been throwing lowballs about the team and Joe in particular, blaspheming his family and his religion in the process. It’d been the last game of the previous season and Joe had solved the issue in the alleyway with his fists and definitely remembered the incident.

He just thought it’d have gone away seeing as he’d gone so long without hearing anything.

Now, though, he was unsure enough to at least take Webster’s word for it. “ _What are you talking about?_ ”

“I’ll explain later. Just trust me,” Webster insisted, digging his keys from out of his pocket.

“You. Why would I ever trust you?”

“Just do it.” Webster yanked Joe back to the front. “Say your goodbyes and meet me outside. The cops’ll be here any minute and you’ll be arrested and in jail and the league doesn’t need that kind of press. You need to lay low while Winters and Sink take care of this. Joe, trust me.”

Trust David Webster.

Well, Joe had done stranger in his life, he supposed.

*

David Webster was beginning to regret ever hiding Joe from the police while Winters and Nixon dealt with the fallout and the cops. It had been fine for the first twenty minutes and then Joe had started bitching about his choice of cereal, about the way the couch hurt his back, about how there wasn’t enough light in his loft. That had been the first night and now they were to the third.

David had thought he was in the clear and had even brought his on-and-off girlfriend back home with him, draping his scarf and coat on the hangar in the midst of kissing her and guiding her up to his bedroom. It was mercifully silent and he was hoping that maybe Joe was out with some of his team, giving him this so-well-earned respite.

They were up to the bedroom and half-clothed in record time, his shirt off and her jeans shed by the doorway and as they tumbled into the bed, David thanked god for small miracles like Joe Liebgott being out of the…

“Hey, Web, I’m out of smokes,” came that slightly nasal complaint of a tone from the doorway.

His girlfriend froze and David went still as a mannequin as he gaped at the doorway to find Joe in a pair of jeans that barely fit him – that would be because they weren’t  _his_ and were instead Webster’s – and a tank-top, a silver chain tucked under. Whatever mood and thrall had been cast over them earlier had dissipated in an instant flat and his girl immediately pried away and wrenched her jeans back on.

“Who is he?” she demanded immediately.

Joe lit up with a shit-eating grin and looked her over. “Me? No one,” he said and Webster sighed relief that there was nothing inherently  _Joe_  about that statement. “Well, unless you count that I’m fucking him.”

“What!?” Webster and his girlfriend echoed at once and sent furious glares in Joe’s direction. Joe just shrugged in an ‘I just do it’ way.

There was no power in the world that could stop her from storming out of the room after that point and the way she slammed the door, Webster figured he could count on his neighbors complaining about the noise, next. With every ounce of irritation, he fixed a glare on Joe and sneered with all his might.

“You’re the guy fucking me?” Webster echoed incredulously.

“Well, to be honest, technically you fuck me over every third week of the month,” Joe replied with a bitter and cruel note running through his tone. “I was just returning the favor for once.”

“Asshole,” Webster accused as he yanked on a shirt.

“Fucker,” Joe casually said in return.

“You started all this,” Webster informed him. “Way back at the bar the night you decided to completely denigrate every ounce of respectable history the game has and _then_  you decided to piss all over my shoes  _and_  stole the girl I was flirting with.”

“Jesus Christ, Webster, that was eleven months ago! Get over it!” Joe said, as if boggling over how long he had carried this grudge.

“Says the man who keeps coming by my office to bitch at me for words,” Webster commented in return, snapping his button-down lapels and stalking right past Joe and down the stairs of the loft, heading for the kitchen.

Without a single hesitation, Joe followed him. “Maybe if you didn’t make sure you were there, we wouldn’t argue every month.” He stopped on a dime when Webster did, wrenching the drawer in the hall open and taking a fresh pack of cigarettes out from it before he shoved them into Joe’s waiting palm. Joe grinned broadly, an array of teeth on display before he snaked one out of the pack. “Thanks, Web,” he saluted and stood there, just waiting.

Waiting for a light, apparently.

Webster stared at Joe incredulously and muttered under his breath in German as he dug through his pockets and found his lighter, flicking up a flame and giving Joe a dirty look.

“ _Don’t look so put out, Web_ ,” Joe lazily replied in German. “ _Could be worse. I could’ve told her I gave you crabs._ ”

“I hate you,” Webster said, voice cool with condescension and irritation.

“Feeling’s mutual, Harvard,” Joe retorted and they went their separate ways – Webster to the kitchen and Joe to the spare room.

The sound of slamming doors seemed to fade into the loft in sync and Webster pressed his back to his own thick door and gritted his teeth hard to try and rid himself of the desire to do something about Joe Liebgott, even if that involved tossing him on his ass or to the cops’ door.

*

Joe didn’t return to the team until they were crossing the state lines and heading out to Washington for their next game. Perconte, Luz, and Janovec were waiting for him outside of the rental car at the hotel as he crossed the street and shouted out a ‘hey, wait up!’, slinging his bag into the backseat and grinning lewdly, snaking a cigarette from Perconte’s hands and lighting it up.

“The prodigal son returns,” Luz announced and clapped him on the back. “Survived your exile with Webster?”

“Hey, I didn’t get arrested. Now let’s book it before I do,” Joe announced, sliding into the backseat of the car and checking the rearview mirror, as if he was waiting to see Webster pop out on the asphalt. He’d left in the morning without a single goodbye, ‘thank you’ or anything resembling kindness. He’d just left a pack of fresh carton of smokes on the table and made his way out of the loft while the other man was still sleeping. “Seattle, here we come,” he announced with a broad grin. “What’d Winters say about me missing practice?”

“Buck convinced him it was better you missed practice than wind up in the slammer,” Janovec said over his shoulder as he pulled out onto the main road.

There was still no one behind them. No cars, no trucks, no pedestrians, and definitely no annoying writers. Joe was slightly disappointed. After all the hell he’d put Webster through, he at least expected a ‘good riddance’ when he made his way.

Even as they made their way north on the highway, there was absolutely no one trailing them and he hadn’t even received a phone call to tell him that life was so much simpler and quieter without Joe there.

Fuck, it was almost as if he hadn’t gotten under Web’s skin enough.

“You’re thinking loud enough to power a whole circus, Joe,” Luz observed. “The fuck is so important that you can’t participate in a game of I Spy, huh?”

Joe didn’t even bother to dignify that crap with an answer. He dragged one of Webster’s cigarettes from his pocket and rolled down the back window to light it up and wonder just what he should have done to ensure he really, really pissed Webster off.

Or maybe he was thinking about what he ought to have done to get the man to follow him to Seattle. Fuck, it was bound to be quiet and lonely without him there to keep company. Joe winced heavily as he sucked a long drag of nicotine. He’d never admit it aloud, but he had a bad feeling he was missing David Kenyon Webster’s company.

“Fuck this,” Joe muttered, interrupted Perconte’s bickering with Luz that the color they were looking at was  _chartreuse_ , of all things. “Come on, let’s pull over and grab lunch before I starve to death, huh?”

Fuck David Webster. He didn’t deserve to get missed by Joe, and that was that.

*

“Lipton.”

“Lip, please.”

“You have to help us.”

The useless cries were coming from Muck, Luz, and Babe who were coated in a thick sheen of sweat and who were using their two-minute water break to convene with the team captain in a moment of desperation. Nay, more than a moment, a long-planned climax of absolute panicky neediness. Lipton barely glanced to his side. He was just as sweaty as the rest of them and regulating his breaths as best as he could, but he saw no use in whining about it when that would just make things much harder.

He clapped Muck on the back and nodded to lead them back to the field, where the team was currently going through their sixth round of Supersized-Suicides. The principle was basic, but it used the whole field rather than a small area to maximize turnaround time. “What’s up, guys?” Lipton asked warmly.

“You gotta talk to him,” Muck pleaded.

“Lipton, really,” Luz deadpanned. “For the sake of humanity.”

“I can’t,” Babe wheezed, “do this much fucking longer. I’m gonna need a medic.”

“Yeah, I bet you will,” Luz cracked with a smirk and smacked a hand against Muck’s chest to drive home his point. He received a heavy ‘oof!’ in reply and then a whack against the back, which earned a ‘hey, watch it!’ from Luz. Lipton watched the whole scene with the utmost of patience.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Lipton asked politely.

“He’s your ex,” Babe offered matter-of-factly.

“Do… _something_ ,” Luz suggested in a way that said he was taking lessons from Harry in how to deliver a simple and innocent sentence in the most lewd way possible. Or the other possibility was that it was meant to be extremely dirty. “If anyone’s gonna get him to lighten up, it’s you. I mean, are we really sure this isn’t him taking out the breakup on you?”

“Guys, get back to the starting line,” Lipton said simply.

With a smattering of grumbling, the three did just as they’d been ordered to (though not without a head-slap here and there).

“Are they really wrong?”

Lipton sighed and prayed to God for patience to deal with another wave of questions. He turned to find Buck and Harry lingering at the dugout, chugging down on water and relaxing as best they could in their recumbent poses.

“Don’t tell me you’re praying for respite?”

“Me? Nah,” Buck promised with a broad grin. “I think Harry might be having a rough go, but part of that might have to do with that buxom blonde watching from the stands,” he pointed out, waving warmly to Kitty and smiling with a confident air. “I think Harry means the part where he might be taking out the breakup on the team. Would I be right in assuming, Harry?”

“That you would,” he agreed. “Don’t smile at Kitty like that,” he complained with a mutter, wrapping his arms around his torso. “I don’t like her remembering you exist. Your chest is too…too…”

“Manly?”

“And then some.”

“Coach Speirs is not taking out his frustrations regarding our relationship on Team Express,” Lipton assured in a way he felt he could use at a press conference, if prompted. It had that measured confidence to it that was often told he embodied. “He simply has his own beliefs as to how a team should be run.”

“Into the ground at this rate,” Harry cracked and shoved Buck’s shoulder. “C’mon, he’s giving us the eye. Better get back before we’re double-timing this go.”

“Think about it, Lip,” Buck said, seriously. “We’re not saying you have to put out…”

“Though it could be helpful…”

“…but you ought to at least consider some of this is leftover irritation.”

“Thank you for taking the role of my shrink without being asked, Buck,” Lipton offered with that endless sincerity in his sarcasm that had annoyed and confused many team members in days before. Buck seemed to weather it in stride with a grin and a ‘no problem’ to him before he shouted over to Malarkey with a ‘Hey, Red, ready to get your ass kicked!’ and left Lipton to stare in Speirs’ direction.

He was a lot closer than he thought he’d last been.

“Did you hear?” Lipton asked politely.

“Did I hear what? Did I hear the men talking about how I’m some spurned lover and the only way I can process it is by turning them into the best team in the league via torture?” Speirs clarified. “No. None of it. I didn’t hear a word.”

Lipton shared a rueful smile with their new coach and hopped down from off the bleachers where he’d been sitting, sliding his glove back on his hand as he gave Speirs a simple nod.

“I was thinking that we could get a drink,” Speirs suggested as they walked back to the diamond, where the men were lining up to take another stab at the sprint to the outfield and back (as the winner got to sit out the next run). “We could discuss the more recent changes in the team’s dynamics.”

Lipton felt like some of his calm was possibly wavering. He also had the distinct feeling that he was being watched heavily by at least ten of the boys on the team and that he’d be watched by more if some of them hadn’t snuck out for a quick cigarette.

“Sir, do you think that’s the best idea?”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t promote healthy relationships between the coach and the captain of the team,” Speirs managed.

Lipton smiled and it was the kind of smile the cat had just before he got the cream. “Excellent idea, Coach,” he agreed with a nod of his head and for one split-second, Speirs actually looked like he was about to get redemption for his acts. “I’ll tell Buck that we’re having a drink to discuss the future of the Express.”

And in another half-second, that gratified smile went from Speirs’ lips to Lipton’s.

Now, there were twenty men watching them and within earshot.

“Seven PM?”

“Seven good for you, Buck?” Lipton called over to the other man, who was doing an admirable job of trying to ignore the conversation by pointing out the seams on Malarkey’s mitt and how they were ‘well, would you look at that, they used black thread’.

Now, he was forced to pay attention and he lifted his gaze. “Seven,” he echoed, catching a Look on Malarkey’s face. “No, seven’s great,” he assured. “I’ll be there with spurs on.”

Lipton held Speirs’ gaze for a very long moment in which they had yet another battle in the midst of their lengthy war. This time, Lipton ceded and blinked first, clapping his hands together to get the team back in formation so they could start…

“Double the length, this time!” Speirs shouted out in his most commanding voice.

There were thirty men who shot a dirty look in Lipton’s direction and only one of them was brave enough to actually say anything.

“I’m thinking,” Buck commented as he set himself in a ready position for the sprints, “that maybe I’m not so far off with my thinking he’s not exactly over it.”

“ **Go**!”

And then they were off.

*

It had been the third game of the season and so far, Express was doing a good job of totaling the competition (with only one worry coming up when it came to Speirs’ former team, who were apparently doubling their practice lengths just to live up to their coach’s expectations, even if that coach was no longer overseeing their progress). With one moment, though, things went from the idyllic high to a possible low that might have crippled them for good.

It had just been a low-flying fastball to the outfield, down the alley between center and left with no real indication as to whose responsibility it was to get it. Toye and Guarnere, two men who had no knowledge of the words ‘let it drop’ went charging at once and in the flash of an eye, Toye was down on the ground, Guarnere limping around and swearing up a blue storm that made the closest audience members cup the ears of anyone under a certain age (and some over it, given Bill’s tendency to get creative with the swearing).

“Medic,” Bill yelped. “Roe, Spina, the fuck are you two? C’mon! Medic!” In an instant, the game slowed to a stop and Buck threw off his catcher’s mask to sprint past the pitching mound and join the small crowd on the outfield grass, trying to help Joe up. The hisses of pain and the way his knee kept buckling made it seem like it wouldn’t be so simple of an issue.

Spina exchanged a long look with Roe and immediately dropped to the ground, stretching out and feeling ligament and bone, trying to see where the issue lay.

“You gotta sub him out,” Roe informed Buck. “He ain’t playing the rest of this game. Bill, how’s the…”

“Fine, Jesus Christ,” Bill interrupted swiftly. “Hurts like a fucking tight bitch, but hey, wouldn’t be the first time in my life for that, ha! Just, just look after Joe, wouldja?”

Roe gave a nod of his head and turned his attention towards Joe, who was hissing and clasping tightly for his leg. Buck was in the space between them almost instantly, taking a long look at him and mumbling to Spina about whether or not they were going to need a stretcher.

It took only about ten minutes of diagnosing before Roe was sure.

“It’s the knee,” he announced. “We need to get some x-rays and see if he needs surgery for it, but he’s out of the game,” he told Buck, raising his gaze to inform Winters of the same thing (the man having run out to check on his player almost immediately, even if he was no longer the official coach of the time). “Sorry about this.” Speirs was lurking nearby and not saying much at all.

Joe wasn’t doing much at all past staring at his leg.

“You think I’ll be back on it for the next game?” he asked Roe, voice rough and hoarse. “Doesn’t feel too bad. Just give me my hat, I’ll get right back into things.”

“Why don’t you sit this one out, okay?” Buck offered quietly, clapping Joe’s shoulder before he crouched down to pick up one end of the stretcher once they’d loaded him onto it. “I’m subbing myself out to get Joe to the hospital. Put Grant in for me,” he directed to Speirs.

“I’m going too,” Guarnere guarantee, hopping his way to grab the other end of the stretcher. “Might as well get meself checked out to make sure I don’t have a matching injury, huh, Joe?”

“Yeah,” Joe muttered in turn. “Don’t think you can start pinning all your bad throws on a bad leg, Gonorrhea.”

“You just wait and see, Joe,” Bill promised, limping as they started to carry Joe off the field. Speirs was already making substitutions and putting Babe in for Bill and Grant in to catch pitches from Martin so the game could resume. The stands were a buzz with whispers of intrigue and questions.

“Just think, Joe,” Buck promised, voice faltering slightly (the only sign that he’d been shaken up by seeing one of his teammates down for the count), “pretty soon you’ll have a war wound.”

“I hear the ladies love that,” Joe said with a half-there grin, as if Joe was struggling to smile in the midst of his pain and discomfort. “Just need a surgery to get some scars on this thing.”

“While they’ve got the scalpels out, you might as well ask ‘em to do your face for ya,” Bill joked and helped the paramedics as they loaded Joe up into the ambulance, one of them testing Joe’s knee and causing him to flinch.

Joe just scowled and the last thing he said before they closed the doors on him was, “I just need to stand next to you to look like a real fucking beauty.”

Bill let out a loud sound that might have been a laugh or a cry of muted pain, but when the doors were closed, Bill exchanged a long glance with Buck and gave him a firm nod. “It’ll be good,” he promised. “C’mon, we can hitch a ride with Winters. I saw him grabbing his keys so he could follow along.” He was forcibly dragging Buck by the arm, even if Guarnere was the one hobbling along with something pulled.

*

While everyone was talking about carpool arrangements to get to the hospital, Liebgott was slipping away from it all because he’d sworn that when they were doing their press conference about the injury, he saw David Fucking Webster in the crowd with his notebook and pen, scribbling away like it was a message from on high.

He followed the man as far as he could until they were vaguely alone and he grabbed hold of his arm, yanking him into the nearest stairwell and releasing him as soon as he could block the door.

“Let go of me or I’ll call the pol…” Webster started to protest and whirled on Joe, something that looked like pepper spray clutched tightly in his hand. “Oh. It’s just you.”

“Yeah, it’s just me,” he echoed. “What the fuck are you doing here? And why didn’t you come to see me off back in California?”

“Well, for one, this is my job,” Webster pointed out, with that irritating roll of his eyes that he always had whenever he deigned himself to be incredibly condescending about something or other. “And as for the second part, you  _hate me_ , Joe, remember? Why would I endure more verbal torture just for a goodbye when I’m following the team through the season, anyway?”

“It’s common decency,” Liebgott bitched as he patted down his jacket and dug out the pack of cigarettes that Webster had bought him back in California. “You got a light?”

“It’s illegal to smoke in here,” Webster pointed out.

“Yeah,” Liebgott agreed. “You got a light?”

Webster sighed and muttered a ‘why do I even bother’ as he stepped forward and dug out his lighter (the one in a vintage silver case) and lit up Liebgott’s cigarette for him, lingering close for a moment. “The charges were dropped, incidentally. Nixon and Winters made a convincing argument for you and since you weren’t in custody, no one had to pay bail.”

“Where’d they say I was?”

“With your boyfriend having a private retreat between practices and games.”

“ _What_?” Liebgott hissed, cigarette nearly dropping to the floor in his moment of shock. “The fuck were they saying that for?”

“Well, it was your argument the night that you got my girlfriend to  _dump me_ ,” Webster muttered bitterly. “I just phoned Winters and told him of your willingness to broadcast that story loud and clear. He just went with it.” From where he was standing, Liebgott was able to see the way the lit tip of the cigarette made Webster’s eyes look something like the sea on a stormy day. They were close.

They were too close and neither of them were making a move to pull away.

“She dumped your Harvard ass, huh?” Liebgott decided to comment on instead of noting that Webster’s lips could really use something to suck on if he insisted on keeping them so widely apart. “About time.”

“We’ll get back together,” Webster said idly. “We always do. Usually our fights are about the attention I spend on my job or us disagreeing about our future. Not because she thinks I’m screwing a fugitive.”

“They  _dropped_  the charges,” Liebgott angrily retorted.

“They still existed because you got too defensive about something before getting aggressive with your fists,” Webster said in reply, infuriatingly calm as he plucked the cigarette from Liebgott’s lips and took a long drag of it before returning it to the other man’s lips. His eyes searched Liebgott’s face and before Joe could say anything about Webster staring, he was pulling the cigarette out of his lips again and cradling it between his fingers as he pinned Liebgott to the stairwell wall and keeping him there with a thorough and firm kiss.

There was no chance in hell that either of them could claim they were drunk during this encounter.

In fact, there was little chance that Liebgott could even claim that he didn’t kiss back because the instant there were lips on his, he was burying long, thin fingers in Webster’s curls and grabbing on tight enough to evoke a yelp from the writer (who was still holding that smoking cigarette between index and middle finger). Webster’s knee slowly slid up and applied scant pressure to Liebgott’s crotch and he hissed for it, biting down on Webster’s lower lip before shoving his tongue further into his throat, bucking his hips up against that knee and trying to escape the pin of Webster’s free hand to his chest.

Fuck escaping, Liebgott realized when the kiss kept going and he was starting to go breathless. The smell of ash barely pervaded his senses and he swallowed hard when Webster eventually eased away and took a long drag of the cigarette, placing it in Joe’s quaking fingers.

“I should be getting back to the press pit,” Webster mumbled with a long look at Liebgott.

“What was that for?” Liebgott demanded, back still pressed firmly to the cement wall of the stairwell.

Webster shrugged and lingered at the doorway. “If I’m single because she thinks I’m with you, I thought I’d at least give it a shot.”

“Oh, so I’m your stopgap til your girlfriend comes back,” Liebgott said, the acid in his tone hardly restrained as it spilled over each and every word. “Nice. Real nice, Professor.”

He got a glare in return and even managed to make Webster slam the door behind him.

Liebgott swore heavily under his breath and picked himself up from his frozen stance against the wall, trying to regain his composure and to shut up the little voice in his head that really wanted to do a lot more than that.  _The girlfriend doesn’t have to come back this time_ , it said reasonably and gave Joe Liebgott a sudden purpose and an appealing goal.

And Joe didn’t take no for an answer.

*

“You disgust me,” muttered Luz as he dragged one of Talbert’s wrists with him.

Muck had the other as they headed for his jeep. “You? Are my hero,” he assured him with a broad grin on his face.

Behind them, two girls from the local bar were leaning against the wall and watching a half-dressed Talbert rushed along and redressed by the other members of the baseball team, while Talbert grinned tipsily at his current situation. One of them even had on the uniform worn by the local nurses at the hospital, though the boys watching from the sliding doors in the lobby had yet to decide whether it was real or just a costume. That said, there was already a sizable bet on it.

“I swear it’s real,” Penk insisted. “Look at the nametag! It’s got a last name, even. Women don’t spend the extra dough to get last names embroidered onto a costume.”

Muck gestured helpfully to Penk as he placed a twenty into the pot.

“Smith,” More countered. “The last name is Smith. The only way it could be  _more_ generic is if she was Jane Doe.”

Talbert was pushed forward while Luz dug out the keys to his car.

“Whoa!”

“No way.”

“You are not driving,” Martin insisted, snatching the keys immediately out of Luz’s hands and taking the lead of the motley band of seven who were heading to relieve the previous crew of their Joe Toye duty. Muck, Penk, Luz, Talbert, Martin, Bull, and More were heading to replace Bill and Buck from their post, having been there for almost seven hours and enduring the morphine-addled ramblings of Joe under a self-controlled drip. Well, at least, self-controlled until he’d started getting in an argument with Bill over whose responsibility it’d been for the ball. Apparently, according to Buck, he’d decided at that moment that Joe needed himself a good nap.

“What’s wrong with my driving!” Luz protested.

“There’s already one of us in the hospital,” Martin muttered, unlocking the doors from across the parking lot. “Like we need seven more?”

That argument went on good and strong, but Penkala and Muck had bigger fish to fry and along with More, pinned Talbert with them as they wandered to the car. Penk nudged Talbert in his side with an elbow, but nothing they seemed to say or do was going to wash that blissful grin off Talbert’s face.

“Come on, fess up,” Muck insisted. “She was a nurse, right? I mean, she had to be. It wasn’t even that sexy a costume.”

“It’s not the costume that makes them sexy, it’s the idea,” More countered. “She wasn’t a nurse.”

“Was too!”

“Not in a million years.”

Talbert just kept strolling forward, his purposeful walk and his silence on the subject only driving the remaining three members of the Express to start bickering louder than before about whether or not Talbert’s interest in women extended to the medical field of professionals.

By the time they got to the hospital, Bill was waiting in the hall.

“I got booted,” he explained with a sour look on his face. He was splitting his time winking at the nurse at the desk and conversing with the men as they arrived. “Buck said I was riling Joe and that the hospital couldn’t afford to go through that much morphine in one night. Can you believe that? Anyway, good thing you boys are here, my ass is getting real tired of hospital chairs. Nurses say they can’t even do anything about it,” he joked, winking once more at the girl behind the desk. “So, sweetheart, you said you were getting off soon?”

“As soon as my replacement arrives,” the woman agreed politely, even if she did happen to be looking Bill up and down with an appraising eye.

“Holy shit,” Penkala swore with a giddy laugh, elbowing Muck in the side.

“You have gotta be kidding me,” More muttered his complaint as the group of them watched that Smith girl with the nurse’s uniform walk down the hall. She only stopped to tug on Talbert’s collar and pull him into a long kiss, whispering some mysterious something into his ear before shifting to sit behind the desk.

There was a long look and a couple of hushed comments shared between she and the departing nurse and for all her earlier looks at Bill, suddenly all eyes were on Talbert.

“You have really fucking gotta be kidding me,” Bill deadpanned when it became all too clear what was about to happen. There was a long sigh and she was sidling up to Floyd Talbert, he of the female charms and asking questions about if he had  _really_  done all the things that Miss Smith had commented about in that short time they had spent conversing.

“Tough luck, Bill,” Luz offered. “Could be worse. You could be Joe Liebgott.”

“Why, what’s Joe doing?”

“I’m pretty sure the law considers it stalking,” Penk offered helpfully.

“Getting even with Webster in some way that requires getting the keys to every hotel he’s in on the trip. He’s spending the night calling ahead and getting copies of every last one,” Luz interjected, draping himself over Penkala and Muck’s shoulders to join the conversation. “It’s sad, really. Sad. Almost as sad as Malark sitting alone in that room of his.”

“Not for that long,” the booming voice interrupted as Buck wandered out of the room. “Soon as I get back, I’m dragging him out for darts and drinks until I have to go play chaperone for Lipton and Speirs and I swear,” he muttered, “to  _god_ , if someone could just have mercy on me and shoot me, it wouldn’t be too soon.”

“Come on, get out of here,” Martin coaxed. “We’ll watch Joe.”

“No more morphine. Bill’s already gotten him on too much after they had an argument about who was the better outfielder,” Buck warned sternly, digging his keys out of his pocket and cuffing Bill upside the head. “Come on, Casanova, we’ll bring you to the bar and see what fish you can reel in.”

“Goddamn Talbert,” Bill was still muttering under his breath, intermingled with an Italian curse here and there.

“Hey uh, guys?”

“Yeah, Tab, we know,” Muck sighed. “Just pick us up in a couple hours when you’re done.”

With that, the change in shifts was official and the group of six (a man down with Talbert’s ineffable talents with women bagging him yet another encounter) wandered into Joe’s room to let out a raucous cheer of greeting.

“Hey!”

“Joe Toye, man of the night!”

“Brought you a cigar, buddy.”

“Fuck you guys,” Joe muttered hoarsely. “I thought I was gonna get some sleep.”

“What, in this league?” Luz cracked. “Never.”

*

“I thought we were staying in,” Malarkey was complaining from the bed where he hadn’t bothered to dress past the boxers that hung low on his waist. His hair was still a red jumble of a mess from being grabbed at by Buck. Their pre-practice tumbles in bed (‘warm-ups’, they had been calling them) had turned into ‘once-a-nightly’s and had then turned into ‘whenever-we-have-a-spare-moments’. “We were gonna try and break the three time record.”

The clock read 6:44 and Buck Compton was doing up his tie, having showered and done his best to look well-dressed. He was also going to be painfully punctual for the fear that Speirs might do something unseemly to him if he wasn’t.

“As much as Speirs doesn’t want me there tonight, I’ve got to be there for Lipton,” Buck said apologetically, watching Malarkey in the mirror. “You could come?”

“And watch an hour of back-and-forth lovers’ spat? Pass. I’ll wait until Babe goes to the hospital to relieve the guys. I think there was talk of a drinking game while we watch Anaconda when Muck and Penk get back,” he said excitedly, grabbing at his shirt and sliding into it. “We’re using tequila.”

“You’re brave men with defunct livers,” Buck said, ripping off a mock-salute. He leaned over the bed and pressed a firm kiss to Malarkey’s lips, one that was rife with the promise of a raincheck.

It would be the last ounce of pleasure he’d get for a very long while.

Just as suspected, the scene at the bar was torture at best. Buck had pulled up a chair to sit between Lipton and Speirs, both in the grips of what appeared to be a long-running staring contest that neither wanted to give up. They each had a Scotch and they each seemed determined to walk out of that bar the winner in their tense relationship.

“Don’t all greet me at once,” Buck joked, only to get resounding silence in response. He smiled tersely, glancing to Lip. “So, Lip, how’s things?”

“Good, Buck, thanks for asking,” he politely replied, though he didn’t budge his gaze from Speirs. “They’d be better if we could be elsewhere.”

“Funny, I thought they’d be better if we were talking,” Speirs countered. “And I’m just fine, Buck, thank you for coming to Carwood’s attempts to make this less awkward. Funny how well that worked, huh,” he noted wryly.

“Who needs another round, everyone? Great!” Buck mock-chipperly commented and glancing barwards, he sighed as he saw his salvation. “Jesus fucking Christ, thank you,” he muttered under his breath. “Webster!” He nearly catapulted himself over to the bar, ordering himself a vodka-tonic and sitting in the stool beside the writing man.

“Buck,” Webster greeted pleasantly. “I haven’t seen you since…”

“LA,” Buck filled in with a grin.

“That’s right,” Webster commented with a knowing and rueful smile. “You ‘borrowed’ my intern for the day and somehow managed to convince him to drop out of his promise to attend an Ivy school for UCLA,” he reminisced. “I was going to get a nice referral.”

“Can’t blame the boy for having taste,” Buck pointed out. “What’re you doing here?”

Webster held up his spiral notepad and then his beer, grimacing heavily. “Just got through a couple rounds of interviews with some of the league officials. The word they keep giving is that a decision has been made and they’ll let the community at large know as of next Monday. That’s…what, your Utah stop?”

“We leave for Vegas tomorrow, yeah,” Buck concurred. “So lemme ask you something,” he said, reaching for his drink and eyeing Speirs and Lipton for the best opportunity to slide back into the conversation. Now seemed a poor time as they were having a low and heated discussion with each other. “Why Express? You’d think that the way Joe Liebgott hounds you, you’d ask for a reassignment.”

Webster cradled his beer by the neck, shrugging idly. “You’re the best team in the league. I want to be affiliated with the talent,” he made his excuses. “And Joe’s harmless.”

“Gnats are harmless, doesn’t mean they aren’t annoying.”

“I can deal with annoying. Just keep winning,” he consulted and offered Buck the two drinks for Lipton and Speirs that he’d also come to get.

“Next Monday, huh?”

“Next Monday,” Webster confirmed. “And I don’t know what the decision is. They’re tight-lipped about it, sorry. They don’t tell us much of anything.” Buck offered a ‘what can you do’ shrug about it and Webster offered a nod. “Good luck at the game tomorrow,” he offered. “And uh, tell Lieb I said hi.”

“You’re just taunting him now, aren’t you,” Buck said knowingly.

But Webster was already back to his article to give a proper answer to that question. Buck steeled himself with three glasses in hand and found his way back to the table, hovering when he could finally hear the words to that quiet conversation.

“She’s been lying to you,” Lipton was calmly saying.

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s not in love with me, Ron,” he countered. “She’s been in love with you this whole time and she hated that you picked me. She loves you, not me. And you slept with her.”

Their conversation was quickly overtaken by silence and Buck felt that there was no better time than right that second to descend with the drinks, feeling that more alcohol was just about the only cure that could help this conflict.

“So, Webster had some news about the league,” he offered, returning to the table as if there was no tension hanging thickly in the air and attempting to smother them heavily without even needing a pillow. “Turns out we’ll know our fates next Monday, how about that?”

“Carwood…”

“I wouldn’t lie,” Lipton said firmly, ignoring Buck’s re-entrance to the conversation. Buck felt about three times as uncomfortable as before and a glance back to Webster showed that he was shaking someone’s hand and taking another meeting, so that avenue of escape was out of the question. “Ron…”

“Excuse me,” Speirs interrupted curtly, pushing his chair back and making a brisk exit from the table and the bar.

“Official business, huh?” Buck commented idly, shooting Lipton a knowing glance before standing and reaching to grab Speirs’ untouched Scotch and sliding it over the table to Lipton. “Go on, you’re gonna need that.”

*

Babe was having trouble keeping his eyes open, seeing as he’d been giving the graveyard shift at the hospital (“Rookie gets it!” Muck had cheerfully announced, at which point Babe had asked when the rookie stopped getting the crap jobs and Toye had informed him in his morphine-induced haze that he had to deal until his replacement turned up). It was getting to be about two in the morning and he wasn’t going to last the night.

He still didn’t know how he was going to make it through practice the next day and thanked god that he probably wouldn’t be starting the game that afternoon. He figured if nothing else, this’d be good practice for their next stop when they got to Vegas and the team was staying out at all hours of the night gambling, drinking, and enjoying the wealth of women to choose from.

“You look like you’re well past exhausted.”

Babe started awake, searching the room for the lone voice. Toye was knocked out completely by the drugs and it was almost like an angel was there watching over him. Because, well hell, someone had to have pressed that Styrofoam cup of coffee into his hand. That someone just happened to be Gene Roe.

“What’re you doing here?” Babe mumbled sleepily, readjusting himself in the chair and clutching the cup with his hands, peering through half-lidded eyes to see Roe illuminated by the hospital lights and looking a bit too literally like an angel for Babe’s likings. “Thought everyone sane was asleep.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Roe commented, dragging a chair to the other side of the bed. “Thought I’d come pay Joe a visit when he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of guys.”

“So I’m what, harmless?”

Roe managed a hint of a shrug before hiding a smile behind his hand. “Something like that,” he agreed in that familiar and soothing drawl of his. “Drink your coffee, Edward,” he advised.

“Keep calling me Edward, I might not keep being so harmless,” he muttered into the caffeinated liquid. Still, Babe couldn’t exactly stop being so fucking thrilled about the fact that of all the people in the world, Roe was here with him, albeit because of a bout of insomnia and his concern for a teammate. “You hear about us being in trouble?”

“I did,” Roe agreed softly, nodding gravely. “Heard you were taking interviews and selling advertising all yesterday.”

Babe scowled, still displeased that the Express was now being officially sponsored by some energy drink just because they couldn’t finance the rest of the teams because the country wasn’t aware of the goddamn sport and the damn league. “Yeah, we sold the advertising. Made a couple bucks, so what?”

“It’s all working to something, Edward,” Roe assured, reaching over the bed to clasp his free hand (loosened from his grip when he pried it off to use it in the midst of his ranting) and suddenly their hands were twined over Joe Toye’s ankles and Babe really was starting to wonder when he’d fallen asleep for this to be happening. Babe shifted until his thumb was brushing against the pulse in Roe’s wrist and he glanced at the hospital blankets littering the bed beneath, drawing his hand back when things spent a solid moment chancing towards very awkward.

Babe took a long drag of his coffee, not sure what the hell was going on, and decided that if he was learning baseball from Bill, he might as well take a couple of life lessons seriously, too.

“You like me, don’t you?” he demanded, approaching the situation bluntly. “Or, you say you do. You like me as a guy, a friend, yeah?”

“Sure I do,” Roe agreed easily, looking a bit confused by the sudden turn in conversation.

“And I think you like me more than that,” Babe kept going, blazing forward into that unknown territory and putting it all on the line. It was just like Bill said, you had to force forward if you were ever going to make progress. “I mean, you’re here and you were at the laundromat and Perco said there was a call from you at the front desk waiting for me and…and I’m not saying,” he paused wildly, a bit of a howl of protest in his tone, “I’m not saying I’m gonna whale on you for it or anything, I just think you like me.”

There was a long pause and suddenly, Babe was feeling like a real idiot for saying anything.

“Well?” he kept going. “Do you?”

“What, like you?” Roe asked, clearly teasing. “Edward, you ever stop to notice the coffee’s exactly the way you like it?”

 _Fuck_.

“No,” he said, feeling more than a bit stupid.

“Guarnere told me how you like it best,” he said, slowly shifting to get up from his seat. “I don’t take the time to research the coffee drinking habits of men that I don’t like.” He reached over to squeeze a still-unconscious-Toye’s shoulder before making his way to the doorway. It was only there that he lingered, chancing a look back at Babe. “So yeah,” he admitted with the hint of a nod. “I might like you some.”

With that, all the light was off him, whatever angelic presence was gone, and Babe’s coffee was rapidly turning cold.

“What the…” Joe Toye also happened to be rousing, glancing at Babe. “Was someone else here?”

“Yeah, Roe came to check on ya,” Babe agreed with a broad grin. “Not a bad guy, huh?”

“Yeah,” Toye agreed, lying back down and closing his eyes. “You’d think that.”

Babe couldn’t even bring himself to get pissy with him for making the same retorts that all of Express had been making since he joined the team. Hell, Roe might like him some. It was a good goddamn day.

*

Every time Express departed a city, there was a flurry of activity outside the hotel ranging from personal cars to rental cars to the bus they’d hired for most of their equipment (Harry always volunteered to ride along with, possibly because the bus had a couch that he and Kitty could recline and ‘relax’ on. Malarkey had once ridden along and hadn’t been able to look at Harry since).

“Hey! Come on, Luz, give it back!” Talbert shouted across the parking lot when Luz started flaunting around the little pair of underwear that’d been left in his hotel room. He waited about two seconds (those mystical two seconds in which he actually gave Luz a bit of credit in thinking he might return them) before taking off in a sprint after the shorter man.

Nixon was boggling as he wandered around the chaos, Harry at his side.

“You’re hiding a secret fountain of youth on travel days, aren’t you,” Nixon surmised. “Because there has to be a reason they act like five-year-olds every time we have to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge,” he remarked as they walked around to make sure the equipment and the players were all there. Speirs was still inside taking care of the check-outs, so he wouldn’t be able to level one of his classic glares on everyone for at least another fifteen minutes.

“Come on, guys,” Lipton was shouting, hands cupped around his mouth. “Let’s get a move on. Everyone to their assigned cars, make sure you packed all your gear…!”

As Welsh and Nixon passed Liebgott, they found him on his cell phone, his things in disarray at his feet. “What, you can’t spare two fucking minutes to talk?” he was scowling. “I’m not asking you out to dinner, I just want to grab a drink…”

“Hey! Welshie, settle an argument for us,” Buck’s booming voice came from across the lot. He, Malarkey, Muck, and Popeye were currently engaged in a lazy game of cards on the hood of Buck’s car and were probably the only ones packed and ready to go. Harry gave Nixon a hapless shrug as he wandered over. “No argument,” Buck’s voice faded as Nixon turned away to start shoving people into vans. “We just needed a fifth…”

God, Nixon needed a drink. He just didn’t think that pulling out the flask in the middle of the camp of chaos would be the best idea in the world.

It turned out he didn’t need it, after all.

“Going my way?”

Like a miracle from heaven. Nixon could have sworn he’d just heard Richard Winters’ calm and soothing voice from behind him. It was with a turn to the side that he caught sight of the sun dappling off red hair and the glimmer of a smile (if you looked closely enough). So it turned out that he wasn’t just hallucinating Winters (again, which was a bad side effect from one too glasses of the Vat) and there he was.

“Well hey there, League Commissioner,” Nixon greeted with an affable laugh, heading over to the jeep that he’d driven into the parking lot and leaning in through the open front door window for a long kiss.

Winters happily obliged, which only made Nixon realize how goddamn much he’d missed having him around all the time. Even if that did mean that his lack of vices was being flaunted in his face. Without Winters around, Nixon had been eating meals with Harry and Buck for the most part and forced Lipton to kick him awake when the hangover wanted him to keep his pillow over his head and to drown out every ounce of sunlight with more Scotch.

The loud wolf-whistle alerted Nixon that the entire team had just seen that little greeting kiss.

“Okay, boys, pony up!” Malarkey was nearly shouting in giddy delight. “I think people owe me a helluva lot of money!”

There was a resounding chorus of groans, a couple more low whistles, and George Luz singing ‘She’s Always A Woman’ while inciting Babe, Muck and O’Keefe (the new replacement for Toye) into joining him in a surprisingly harmonic chorus. The only people who didn’t seem to care about the ruckus were Liebgott on his cell phone (“Oh for christ’s sake, so what? You go do your interviews and then you pick me up from the hotel and we’re home by nine,  _Ma_.”) and Talbert and Lipton, who actually happened to be packing up their things.

“What’s all the commotion?” Speirs’ even voice commented as he approached Nixon’s side, giving Winters a nod of his head in greeting. “Dick, I didn’t think we’d see you until Vegas.”

Winters had yet to get out of the car, giving a lazy smile to the both of them. “I figured that once Nix saw the bright lights of the city, I wouldn’t see him for a while. I figured I’d best offer him a ride and play catch up.”

Nixon was still staring at Dick with stars in his eyes, like this was Christmas and his birthday wrapped into one hell of a great package. “You’re in Vegas?” he asked eagerly, trying not to sound like that kid on the schoolyard who was made to eat sand most of the time – or as some people on the team would call him, Hoobler. “You never told me.”

“Surprise,” Winters said in that calm way he had of saying things. That smile on his face was completely giving him away, though and Nix was shooting Speirs a cheerful grin. “Ron, you think you can handle the boys without your playmaker for a day or two?”

“I think we’ll manage to survive,” he assured with his own wry smile. “I’ll keep the boys in line.”

“Yeah, well, don’t kill them,” Nixon protested as he climbed into the backseat of the car, sliding his bags in there as half of his body lay draped outside. “If I have to deal with one more threat of mutiny, I’m sending the drunks up to your doorstep to whine at you about how unfair it all is.”

Speirs didn’t seem to have much of a reaction to that at all. He simply nodded and made his way off with a determined walk.

“That didn’t do much good, huh?”

“I don’t think it did, Nix,” Winters agreed, glancing in the rearview mirror as Nixon shut the backseat door and got himself good and comfortable on the seats in the back. “Nix?”

“What,” Nixon scoffed. “We haven’t seen each other in nearly four days and you expect me to wait a ten-plus hour drive for it?” He patted the seat beside him and offered one of the cockiest grins that had ever seen fit to grace his face. “And here I thought you knew me inside and out, sins and all.”

“Roll up your windows,” Harry Welsh commented, elbows leaning against the passenger-side window as he poked his head in the car and saluted lazily to Nix. “Nix, your trousers are undone.”

“I thought I was in the middle of something,” he bitterly commented, but made no move to do them up. “Care to ask Kitty if you can join us?”

“Just thought you’d want to know that we’re shipping out and about the only person who isn’t aware the both of you are doing it is Liebgott and only because he’s busy trying to verbally stab Webster through his phone.”

“What’s the argument now?” Winters asked calmly.

“Last I heard, whose turn it is to buy,” Harry said, clapping his palm on the roof twice before pushing away to rejoin Kitty by the bus. “Roll the windows up and we’ll see you in Vegas.”

“City of shining lights and quickie marriages,” Nixon said with only the hint of a joke in his words. “Ever fancy yourself getting hitched by an Elvis Impersonator, Dick?”

“With your history of marriage?” Winters deadpanned, opening the door and gracefully stepping out, only to open the backseat door and climb in, pinning Nixon to the leather seats with an arm on either side of his torso. He yanked the door shut behind them and quickly made history of the scant space between their bodies, leaving nothing there but a wisp of an absence. “Nixon, as much as I love you,” he calmly informed him, lips brushing past the skin of his neck, “marrying you by the power vested in a Fake-Elvis is not the most auspicious start to any life.”

“Plus, you don’t exactly suit Wife Number Four. I prefer to think of you as the mistress,” Nixon deadpanned, hands gripping Winters’ hips firmly and bringing him in closer. “Much dirtier that way.”

Winters wisely kept whatever comment about their current situation and its level on a relative scale of kinkiness to himself.

As Harry had once put it, you just weren’t a man of the Express Team until the boys had heard you having sex at least once.

*

Webster honestly didn’t know why he’d pressed ‘talk’ when his cell started ringing and it turned out to be his girlfriend on the other end of the line, but maybe he was simply indulging in the fact that he was a masochist and he really had meant what he told Joe Liebgott in the stairwell that night. It was a sort of comforting inevitability that they would get back together at some point.

“I’m in…” he began, trailing off when his voice echoed off the hotel walls a little too loudly. “I’m in Vegas, baby. There’s a couple more stops before I can even swing around and visit you,” he said, juggling his bag and cradling the cell with his shoulder to get at his hotel key. “No, it’s not anything to do with you,” he sighed heavily. Webster managed to get the heavy door open, using his shoulder to leverage the weight of the door and push his way inside. “It’s my job,” he said, voice heavy with irritation. “No, it’s…”

But before he could say anything else, his cell phone was plucked from the confines of shoulder and neck and Webster gaped at the form of Joe Liebgott standing inside his hotel room in possession of his cell phone.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he drawled, “Keen can’t come to the phone right now. We’re a little occupied.” He flashed Webster a nasty little smirk filled with  _intent_  and Webster let the door shut behind him. Whatever possessed him to take the call was also allowing Joe to keep the phone in his hands, listening to the high-pitched response on the other end. “I’ll give him your message, though. Kisses.”

With that, Joe snapped the phone shut and tossed it to the sofa to the side. The daylight was spilling heavily into the room from the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and Webster was slightly lost as to  _why Joe Liebgott was inside his hotel room_.

“Let me guess,” Webster intoned in a deadpan. “She still thinks you’re the guy fucking me?”

“She’s about to be a whole lot right,” Joe warned him, grabbing hold of Webster by the arms and pinning him to that long expanse of glass wall, pushing in and keeping him against the thick barrier with a long kiss, hands already yanking to untuck his shirt and to pop loose the buttons on his pants. “Tell me you’ll let it die,” Joe insisted, voice sharp as anything. “Tell her to fuck off the next time she calls you.”

“It’s not that si-mple!” Webster nearly squeaked when Joe shoved a hand down his jeans and grabbed hold of his cock with swift determination. Joe looked like he could live and love the sound of Webster’s shoulders pressing back against the glass with that scrape and slight squeal and Webster knew immediately that Joe was very, very much going to enjoy this. “Why should I?” Webster challenged breathlessly, head tilted to the side to watch Joe’s long fingers slowly push Webster’s shirt off his shoulder, revealing skin tanned from summer trips out on his boat.

The other side fell and Webster was suddenly shirtless and pressed against the tinted glass of the twenty-fourth floor of the hotel.

“Because it’s my turn,” Liebgott announced in a quiet tone. “Stop being on-again and off-again with her and choose me,” he demanded, not so much a question.

There was no response.

Liebgott’s hands had drifted lower and were fixed on now undoing inch by inch of Webster’s zipper, never once taking his eyes off of Webster’s, glancing down to his lips only when Webster let out a shaky breath.

“Choose,” he insisted, leaning in for a hard kiss, nipping at Webster’s lower lip and drawing their bodies flush together, “me.” It wasn’t much longer before the last remnants of clothes were stripped off and they were pressed against that window, stark naked with a condom in Joe’s hands. “I’m not gonna stop askin’,” Liebgott warned. “So you might as well say yes,” he said as he grasped Webster by the shoulders and spun him, pressing him up against the wall and pushing into him, hand wrapped firmly around his cock. Liebgott was fully in control and Webster had to know that he wouldn’t relinquish it and that this would go exactly as he planned it to.

Webster was pushing back against every push forward, giving enough friction and resistance to make every very good sensation turn into an epiphany of sex for Liebgott, his mind going blank and struck at once as he grasped Web by the hip, fingers making pink marks that he hoped wouldn’t fade anytime soon.

For every thrust forward, Webster gasped in this little breathy way that made Liebgott wonder why that girlfriend ever let him out of her sight if this was the way he came undone while he was having sex. That hand on his hip raised higher to brush back a curl from his forehead, stroked at his neck, before descending even lower to join the other in bringing Webster off while his hips jerked forward and he buried his head in Webster’s neck, biting and nipping at his shoulder with every thrust that seemed to go so deep that the heat and the tightness coaxed Liebgott to simply  _stay_.

By the time Webster was coming, Liebgott had beat him by scant seconds and was collapsed on his feet, pressing up against Webster.

They made it to the bed before the second round, fell off the bed and didn’t bother to get up off the floor for the third, and the fourth mostly involved a very lewd description from Webster in regards to some of the things he’d caught other people doing (which had turned into a lazy go of number four).

By the time they were both too exhausted to do anything else, it was hours later and they were collapsed in that king-sized bed that came with Webster’s room without a single shred of clothing to either of their bodies. Liebgott leaned over to snatch the cigarette from Webster’s lips and lay there, staring at the ceiling.

“I could’ve sworn you hated me,” he muttered.

“This, from the man pleading me to dump my girlfriend for him.”

“The same guy who gave you four rounds of damn good sex,” Liebgott pointed out with a smug little smirk, handing back the cigarette. “Well? What’re you gonna do?”

“I think,” Webster said heavily, “that I’m going to finish this cigarette, get dressed, go eat dinner. Then I’m going to call her back and apologize for hanging up on her and then I’m going to come back and sleep.”

“Huh,” Liebgott commented.

“Why, interfere with your plans?”

“Nah, I wasn’t planning on moving,” Liebgott informed him with a broad grin, one elbow folded behind his head as he shifted to get comfortable. “King sized bed means you got a bunch of room. Oh, and say hi to your broad for me, why don’t you,” he encouraged as he watched Webster smoke and try and find his jeans (which Liebgott had done a good job of kicking to the side in the midst of their rounds).

Liebgott couldn’t help feeling a bit victorious by the time Webster left the room to check all those things off the to-do list. Far as he was concerned, all it would take now was time before this turned into a regular thing.

*

O’Keefe was being hazed by Perconte, Garcia and Luz by the time Liebgott made it out of bed (which happened to occur when Webster forcibly yanked him up and informed him that his buddies at the bar were asking for him). They were spending their time in the little Vegas lounge where the slot machines were paying out nearby and neon lights were distracting the men.

Save for Liebgott, whose attentions were on Webster (who was sitting across the bar and scribbling idly in his notebook).

“Where  _were_  you all night?” Luz accused Liebgott with a jab in his shoulder. “You didn’t pick up when we phoned you to grab dinner.”

“Occupied,” Liebgott said with the flash of a cocky grin. “Come on, newbie, keep drinking,” he informed O’Keefe when the young boy glanced up with interest at the conversation. There was a row of various shots lined up in front of him and he was on strict orders from the entire Express team (well, not Harry and Buck, who had no clue this was happening. Well, they didn’t know exactly what was happening. …and by that, it was simply that they didn’t know  _which_  shots were being purchased) that he was not to go to bed until they were all consumed.

“You could’ve asked him if he at least had any news about the conference,” Perconte bitched, yanking one of O’Keefe’s shots to himself and downing it. “He’s got all those fucking notes in his book and you didn’t even look?”

“I didn’t go there to fucking spy on him, okay?” Liebgott bitched.

“Then what were you doing?” Garcia pointed out.

“Mind your own business, kid. And come on, pay attention to O’Brien, he’s on shot twelve.”

“It’s O’Keefe,” he protested weakly.

“Yeah, well, in a second, it’ll be O’Spew,” Liebgott easily replied, eyes cast over the bar one more time to find Webster staring into space. That was, the space that Liebgott was occupying and Liebgott hauled himself out of his chair. “Fine, Frank, I’ll see if he’s got any of your precious notes. Then you can blow him a sugary kiss to say thank you.”

“Thank you!” Perconte called after him, sharing a look with Luz over the row of remaining shots that O’Keefe had to down. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he agreed, without Luz even saying anything to have agreed with.

“Right about what?” Garcia leaned in between the two to ask.

“Webster,” Luz indicated, jerking a thumb to point at him. “Probably knows exactly if the league’s shutting down.”

“And Joe’s probably doing him,” Perconte added. Four heads craned around to watch the two at the bar and the body language that existed between them. Liebgott was playing with the sheets of paper, his whole body angled towards Webster and they seemed to be arguing about something. There just didn’t seem to be much space between them as they spat out the words. “Maybe it’ll tone him down.”

“I don’t feel so good,” O’Keefe mildly piped up.

“Who’s on cleaning duty?” Luz clarified, already digging out cash to pick up the tab while Perconte and Garcia were more occupied with picking up O’Keefe to haul him back. “It’s what, Babe, right? Cuz he’s got a medic all to himself,” he cracked with a broad grin. “Okay, O’Keefe, good news. You’re crashing some personal time of Heffron’s til you sober up.”

“Did I win?”

“Sure did, kid,” Luz agreed warmly, clapping him on the back. “Just don’t throw up on Speirs’ shoes, huh? Do us all a favor by not invoking  _that_  kind of wrath.”

Just as they were about to leave, Liebgott joined them with a little slip of paper between his fingers, flicking it in Perconte’s direction.

“What’s this?”

“All he’d give me.’

“What, you couldn’t blow him a nice…”

“Luz!” Perconte and Garcia sounded at once, the latter of which shot him a disapproving and slightly disgruntled glare. Perconte slowly opened the paper to glance at the information on it and handed it right back to Liebgott. “Don’t think this is all for me.”

“What?” Liebgott scowled, taking it back. “It’s got the press conference information on it and the times and the…”

“And your  _appointment_ ,” Perconte agreed with a broad grin. “At Web’s beck and call already, huh?” Liebgott gave him a shove and tucked the paper away as they focused on dragging O’Keefe towards the elevator bank and to put a damper to whatever close and interpersonal fun was going on in Babe’s room.

“Welcome to the team, buddy,” Luz whispered to O’Keefe as they were dropping him off. “It’s gonna be a real ride and a half.”

*

It was Sunday morning and the entire team was well-aware that within thirty-six hours, their fates might be forever changed. They had spent the day off rifling through address books to find every last contact they had in order to make their desperate arrangements in case they found themselves with a suddenly voided contract and no job in the foreseeable future.

Lipton had opted to catch up on an early night’s rest to get him in proper shape for the Utah game. Peace and quiet had been the motto of the night.

Or it had been until his hotel phone started to ring off the hook.

Again.

And again.

And then again.

Lipton leaned over to turn the bedside lamp on and sighed, debating whether to even pick it up. The last few times he had, he’d been subjected to Luz asking if his refrigerator was running and if it was, could they please enter it back into the Olympics because Refrigeratoria needed its gold medals. And then there’d been Muck and Penkala pitching their voice up an octave and adding an accent and asking if Lipton was lonely.

Sometimes, he had to wonder if Express was worth this. Of course, then they would come to a game and a celebration and Lipton forgot he was ever questioning things to begin with.

He was settling himself to sleep again with the knowledge that if the call had been important, it would go straight to his cell phone. That had been fairly decent logic except that Lipton had to endure another three rounds of the hotel phone ringing and inevitably, he picked up the phone with a weary sigh.

“Luz, there is no Amanda here, neither to hug, nor to kiss,” he very patiently explained.

There was a long silence on the other end.

“I never thought there would be.”

Suddenly, Lipton was wide awake. “Ron,” he said quietly, letting out a groan. “I’m sorry, I thought you were one of the boys. They seem to think when I take an early night, I’m giving them license to torture me with prank calls.” There was another long silence in which neither of them spoke and Lipton wasn’t sure what this call was meant to be.

“I tried calling your cell, but I couldn’t get through.”

“I might have blocked your number,” Lipton was forced to admit. “I did it after I found the two of you and I never found reason to undo it.”

“Ah,” was Speirs’ knowing response.

There was a knock at the door, disrupting Lipton’s train of thought as he tried to think of something besides small talk to intercept the next long pause that was inevitably arriving. “Hold on a second, Ron,” Lipton said as he transferred the hotel phone to the desk, prying himself out of bed (in his sensible pinstriped blue pajamas) and finding his way to the door to coax Perconte to try one of the others to get some toothpaste or to inform Talbert that he could not help in disposing of someone of the ‘too clingy’ persuasion.

He pulled the door open to find Ron Speirs standing there with his cell phone in his hand.

“I brought wine,” Speirs informed him, hanging up the phone, holding up the bottle, and pushing inside the room with the grace and effortless attitude that only Ron Speirs could manage.

Lipton offered a tense smile. “We play tomorrow, remember?”

“And?”

“I abstain the day before,” Lipton calmly said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. That didn’t seem to stop Speirs from closing the door behind him and setting the wine on the desk, crossing the room to instantly push Lipton down to the bed and crawl atop him in a straddle. “Ron,” he warned.

“Don’t talk yet,” Speirs insisted, settling in a comfortable straddle and keeping his arms at Lipton’s shoulders. “Carwood, I am sorry for all the things I’ve put you through while I’ve been misled,” he began, voice so serious that Lipton doubted anyone could ever assume he was anything but one-hundred percent genuine. “And you need to put aside your preconceptions about my doing this to hurt you because you’re fully aware that I love you.”

Only Ron Speirs could say those words with the biting sharpness that he managed. Coming from his lips, they almost seemed a weapon that could be turned against the world. Lipton didn’t struggle yet, but was managing to plan an evasive escape if that became necessary in the next little while.

He tried to ignore the fact that in trying to keep Speirs from getting too close, his hands had wound up on his hips or the fact that Lipton was flat on his back.

“You can be sorry all you like and still do it,” Lipton pointed out. “And you have to serve out the probationary period before I can trust you again.”

“So that’s it? I’ve lost your trust?”

“Yes,” Lipton agreed, finding that it seemed very simple when he put it that way. “First you gain back my trust through friendship. If you can retain it, if you really are sorry, you should have no issues. Once that strengthens, we can have another go of it.  _If_.”

“If,” echoed Speirs as he shook his head. “So what you’re saying to me,” he said, leaning down until his lips nearly brushed Lipton’s with every breath he drew in and every word he exhaled, “is that even right now, even if you still were in love with me, you wouldn’t kiss back?”

Lipton managed to keep his breathing even and calm and didn’t nod because that would bring his lips up against Speirs. “It’s a matter of trust, Captain,” he said dutifully. “You need to earn mine back and that doesn’t come through kissing.”

“Now I’ve heard different,” he rumbled quietly, eyes flicking down to Lipton’s mouth as his hands firmed up on his shoulders. He brushed one firm hand lower, over Lipton’s crotch and the traitorous reactions proved that while Lipton might be stoic in regards to forgiving Speirs, his body was willing to go faster. “See?”

“That’s not trust,” Lipton very calmly said. “Ron, get off me. You can stay and we can talk, but we’re not doing this.”

For a very long moment, Lipton wondered if the world had changed so drastically in the last while that he could no longer predict what Speirs would do in any given situation and every second that drew out in which he didn’t rise from his straddle made those doubts compound and grow worse than before.

Speirs did rise, though, giving relief to Lipton’s judgment of his ex-boyfriend’s character and hope that ex could be removed from that descriptor some mysterious date in the future.

“Talking,” Speirs said with a groan of a sigh, managing to cock a suffering grin Lipton’s way. “The things I do for you…”

“Well,” Lipton couldn’t help saying as he dug around his drawers for the corkscrew he’d confiscated from Perconte the other night when Luz kept trying to juggle semi-sharp objects and had borrowed that from Perconte, the darts from Buck, and a dulled Swiss Army Knife from Webster, who had been visiting. “You love me, I recall.”

“Yeah,” Speirs agreed with a simple nod of his head, no joke to his tone. “Yeah, I do.”

Lipton extended the corkscrew and two hotel glasses over to Speirs, managing a halfway there little shrug. “Maybe I can break the rules and have a little to drink. If you have to earn my trust back, I might as well prove it’s worth doing.”

“That was never an issue,” Speirs assured Lipton, voice barely audible.

Maybe this was a mistake, Lipton thought as he took half a glass of red and sank down onto the edge of the bed, listening to a rousing explanation of the strategies Nixon had planned for the next day.

By the time Lipton was laughing and feeling completely at ease, he knew the wine had nothing to do with it. It had everything to do with the man before him and for the first time in many months, Lipton thought that was an okay thing to have happen.

*

“That’ll be all,” Sink was saying as he tried to calm the din of the room with just a stern voice and two hands that weren’t doing very much. Winters (to his right) had an express look of concern on his face. “That will be all!” he sharply commented to the reporters who were trying to ask questions and to the players who had amassed to hear their fate. “We are not at liberty to discuss how this will pan out, but as of this moment, the league is officially integrating with the international showing and will be reduced from nine teams in total to three from the US and six from overseas,” he announced, leaning into the mic.

“Sink! Mr. Sink!” shouted the reporters.

“Who will keep their jobs?” Webster shouted above the din, standing in the front row and getting his voice out above the assorted other questions (some different, some of the same).

Sink adjusted with a glance back at Winters before turning his gaze to the crowd. “At this juncture in time, we have no confirmed players for next season. All contracts are to be assumed as up in the air as we make decisions, but tryouts will be scheduled as usual in the spring for anyone looking to join the league.”

“Sink! Commissioner!”

It was no use. He rested a firm hand down on the podium and gave a firm nod. “Alright, everyone, I’ve got a league to run and you’ve all got jobs to do, so let’s drop this for the moment and go out there and play some damn baseball. Got it?”

They cleared the podium in what seemed like record time and the journalists filed out next. Webster hung around by Luz and Grant, shooting a smile in Christenson’s direction. “Don’t worry yet, guys,” he assured. “I’m taking a couple more interviews today and I think there’s more to this that they aren’t telling.”

“You’ll let us know, first thing?” Grant asked worriedly.

“First thing,” he assured. “I was kinda hoping to try out next year,” he said, clapping Christenson on the back as he kept milling through the crowd, finding his way to the door. “Guess that option’s off the table.”

He managed a terse smile before disappearing out the door (not before Liebgott was able to share a long, wordless exchange of a look with him, neither man moving towards the other or bothering to say a word).

There were stragglers from the Daredevils and the Foxes in the room, but for the most part, it was Team Express in a makeshift circle as they all glanced at each other and the worries of all the past few weeks had come home to roost, cementing themselves in actual form.

“Jesus Christ,” Harry muttered, breaking the silence. “I promised Kitty we’d use next year’s salary to start a nest egg.”

“Let’s not get hasty,” Buck said calmly. “I’m sure they’ll want to keep the best players going.”

“So what?” Cobb complained from where he was leaning into the huddle. “So the best stats-earners get to stay and the rest of us lounging around in mediocrity get to screw off?”

“Jesus, Cobb,” Luz howled in protest as Malarkey crowed in agreement.

“He’s got a point,” More quietly broke into the loud heckling that seemed like it might take over the conversation and give it a turn towards the inane while there were still some heavy issues on the table. “Buck, no offense, but you know you’re safe. Lip, you too, probably. The rest of us…”

“Up in the air,” Penkala sighed.

“Like a fucking flyball,” Liebgott added.

“Alright, you know what?” Luz announced, clapping his hands together and smacking Buck lightly on the cheek, the other resting on Muck’s shoulder. “I have never in my life heard of a cause so worthy as to break out the booze and the reserves of money than this. We’ve got ourselves a hotel bar, a liquor store nearby, no game tomorrow, and one helluva reason to drink our livers into submission. What do you say, boys?”

That managed to convince half the team to go, but it still left a very worried Babe, Christenson, Grant, Lipton, Martin, Buck and Bull while Harry seemed to debate between the two (and was inevitably collected by Kitty, who suggested their own private pity party with a helluva lot of red wine).

They were all looking to Lipton and Buck, who had no answers.

“Think we’ll get a cut for being fired?” Christenson finally broke the silence, rubbing his thumb over his cheek as he glanced from man to man, trying to find anything but that glimmer of uncertainty in their eyes. “Fuck, we were undefeated, too.”

“Come on,” Buck encouraged. “Let’s go join the others. The least we can do is get completely drunk until we forget this press conference even happened.”

That managed to get all of them but Babe out of there. The room was empty but for the chairs, the tables, and Babe Heffron, wondering what was going to come of his life now that he had no season in his future. They barely signed on the replacements and they definitely weren’t going to keep them around when most of the league was getting the heave-ho.

It was weird, but all he could think of was wondering if Gene would stop liking him when he suddenly was eight-hundred miles away.

Soon, Babe followed too in the hopes he could capitalize on the time he had left in the league and then there were none.

*

Whenever Liebgott got to the point that he couldn’t take much more of what the world had to throw at him, he’d head out to the practice field and spend a couple of hours just swinging a bat or pitching at a machine, just to get his anger out. They were at their Utah stop when the news broke down the wire that of the nine teams in the league, only three were going to survive and the players would get reshuffled to keep the best and toss the rest. Or at least, that last part was what everyone was assuming, seeing as it wasn’t like they were rushing to clarify. They had to make do with guesswork.

Suffice to say, Liebgott wasn’t exactly real happy with the news, seeing as he was a dependable player, but not exactly a star or a devoted go-to like Buck or Lipton or hell, even Harry. He didn’t even think he’d have a job to go back to, considering his last call home to the cab company had ended in a huge argument with him telling his boss to ‘fuck off and go screw yourself, try it at the same time’.

“I’d offer a penny for your thoughts, but I don’t think they’re worth that much.”

Liebgott glanced up to the offending voice, glaring at David Kenyon Webster who was leaning against the entrance to the field and tugging a glove onto his hand, raising it up for the ball. With all his might and all his frustration, Liebgott wound up his arm and pelted the ball at his head.

The only disappointment was that Web actually caught the damn thing. He tossed it up and down a couple of times and pelted it back at him. They hadn’t exactly talked since Vegas, after Joe had broken into the room and they definitely hadn’t said much of anything important when they’d finished, lying sweating and panting in that king-sized bed of Webster’s.

“What’re you doing here?” Liebgott asked, too tired to really put too much vitriol into his voice. “Shouldn’t you be writing about the news?”

“Submitted the article an hour ago and I came to find you,” Webster replied, finding his way to the pitcher’s mound and extending the glove in the air to ask for the ball. “My girlfriend called.”

That got a sour look on Joe’s face and he turned his head to spit through the dust littering the infield. “Your  _girlfriend_ , huh?”

“I told her to fuck off. Not in so many words,” Webster clarified, winding up with his left hand and throwing a mean fastball right at Liebgott’s glove. “I basically explained to her that there was this guy and he’s sort of an asshole to me but he’s really a good fuck and I can’t stop having drinks with him or wanting to kiss him every time he smokes and occasionally, I like him because when I’m having a really rough day, he quits being a bastard and resembles a supportive human being. So I told her I was going to be insane and try and go for this guy.”

“Fuck,” Joe commented with a half-there scowl of a grin on his face. “He doesn’t sound worth it.”

“He really doesn’t,” Webster agreed, catching the ball when it was lobbed back to him. “Joe, what are you gonna do if the league doesn’t want you back?”

“I dunno,” he sighed as he was forced to admit. “Drive a cab. Cook for some fancy family from fucking New York City with too much money in the bank that their kid can fuck around and write whatever he wants.”

“Ha ha.”

“Thought you’d like that,” Liebgott said with a grin. “Or I could take advantage of that spoiled bastard and laze around a while. Maybe teach some German classes at the local high school, work a couple side jobs until things calm down and I can try out for the league again.”

There was a long moment of silence that spanned between them.

“I mean,” Liebgott continued, deciding to tackle that pink elephant in the corner head-on. “Assuming that you’re wanting me to be your boyfriend or whatever gay thing you’ll call it and that you’re willing to support me a bit financially if I do end up on hard times.” He glanced up at Webster, ball between his hands, knuckles white from his grip on the object. “That what I can expect?”

“I’m still confused how we went from crazy hotel sex to being in a committed relationship?” Webster shot Liebgott a look. “I assume you want it to be committed, unless you’ll let me have something on the…”

“Not on your  _life_.” Liebgott had never been good at sharing his toys.

“Will that mean you’ll be abstaining or do you come from the club of hypocrites?”

“You,” Liebgott announced, throwing the ball in an underhanded lob at Webster, “are stuck with me. So you better be ready to fork over cash for dinners and whatever game I want to go to. I like front row seats,” he added with a shit-eating grin on his face, catching the next curveball that Webster pelted his way. “So you were really planning on trying out?”

“Been practicing all spring,” Webster agreed with a discontent look on his face. “I sit there writing about your games and wishing I was playing them, but that’s out of the question, now.”

“Still don’t know who’s being kept, huh?”

“I’d tell you if I did,” Webster pointed out, crossing the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. “After all,” he said, words measured with patience and thoughtful care. “You are my boyfriend.”

“Fucking right I am,” Liebgott enthused when he got yanked into a deep kiss, right over home base.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he didn’t have games to attend next season if he had something like Webster to preoccupy his time. Plus, with all that money behind him, he was sure that something good could come out of this.

Liebgott faintly thought to himself (as Webster deepened the kiss by sliding his tongue into his mouth) that for an occasion like this, there ought to be fireworks.

After all, it pretty much felt like he’d hit a fucking grand slam.

*

Richard Winters had been sitting in Nixon’s room for the last hour, awaiting the man’s return. Harry Welsh and Buck Compton had stolen him away to take him out in an effort to paint the town whatever color you happened to paint it when your future might be up in flames (not that any of those three men really had to worry. They had the merit and the record to choose to do whatever they wanted to).

He’d even managed to find a bottle of champagne to dedicate to the evening, being that he was the bearer of good news.

He didn’t know whether or not to have expected Nixon to be half-drunk when he stumbled in the hotel room, swaying to and fro with a distinctly mussed look to him. Winters managed a placating smile at Kitty, Harry, and Buck, the three of whom were supporting him.

“We tried to stop him?” Harry offered.

“And nearly had a bottle of Vat 69 stamped down on your fingers?” Winters wielded a guess as they made the transfer of Nixon’s body from their arms to Winters’, getting him settled in the room. “Go get a good night’s sleep, boys. Miss Grogan,” he added, nodding dutifully in her direction.

“Dickie,” she said in sweet return, kissing Nixon on the cheek before threading her arm with Harry and abandoning the hotel room for whatever plans they had for the evening. Winters heard them laughing genially as they want, but his attention was fully on the man in his arms, currently singing a little Irish ditty about the sun at dawn and Irish lasses.

“They’re gone, Nix,” Winters pointed out simply. “Regain your balance.”

Like a lightswitch had been flicked, Nixon went from stumbling about to nearly vertical in perfect balance, leaning over to dig out a cigarette from his pocket and the lighter from Winters’, ignoring the non-smoking sign in the room as he collapsed in a chair. “Thank god,” he muttered. “For a second there, I thought they were gonna pester me all night.” His eyes fixed on the bottle icing and he shot Winters a confused look. “Dick, did I forget about some kind of occasion?”

“Hard to forget about something you have no prior knowledge of, isn’t it?”

“God, spare me the intellectual runaround,” Nix complained. “Why is there champagne?”

“Commissioner Sink has found fit to make his decision in regards to next year’s roster.”

Nixon let out a rueful laugh, sprawling on the bed with a groan, staring at the ceiling. He folded his palms over his chest, craning his head to one side to stare at Winters. “Let me guess. He’s officially deciding to fire me and the champagne is here for you to celebrate.” He was grinning though, as if egging Winters on and it caused a vicious cycle of smiling, on and on and always happy. “Who gets to keep their jobs?”

“In reflection of Express’ incredible undefeated record, media attention, and talent, Sink has decided to leave the team untouched,” Winters announced.

Silence. Nothing but silence as Nixon sat up and gaped at Winters.

“Save for a couple of substitutions. Martin handed in his resignation this morning seeing as the family business is offering him six-digits and obviously, replacements for Blithe and Toye will have to stay on.”

That same silence as before reigned supreme and Nixon couldn’t find himself capable of words at that point, staring at Winters with open-mouthed shock.

Winters slowly leaned in, getting right up in Nixon’s personal space as a broad grin came over his face. “Well?”

“I think you’re a genius. Or a magician. Or something,” Nixon said, still struck with awe, but able to wrap his fingers around the collar of Winters’ shirt to yank him down into his lap. “Because I know Sink didn’t just come to this conclusion on his own without some heavy pushing from a redheaded bastard.”

“Oh, so I’m a bastard now.”

“Damn right you are,” Nixon nearly ran over Winters’ words with his own, grinning widely. “So, does this mean you’re still going to be his lackey? Running around and making sure everything’s coordinated and hands are being held in every game stop along the way?”

Winters kept busy trying to adjust himself, trying to make himself comfortable. Inevitably, he admitted defeat as he slowly pried himself out of the hold and lay on the bed, coaxing Nixon to join him with nothing more than a crook of his finger.

“I may have requested that I have a more hands-on influence with the pet team of the league. And you’re the pet,” he assured Nixon with an easy smile, leaning in to enjoy the first of what was definitely many celebratory and victorious kisses for the evening.

After all. Nixon didn’t even want to start thinking about how hard it’d be to keep flowing in Vat 69 without a steady paycheck.

*

The bed collapsed heavily against the wall with a ‘thunk’ as Liebgott pried himself off of Webster and groaned heavily, wiping the sweat from his forehead and grinning maniacally up at the other man.

“Where did you pick up that trick with your tongue?” Webster panted out when he finally found words, which took him a slight bit of time, considering he had just been nearly screwed into the mattress. He glanced over at Liebgott and let out a bark of a laugh, yanking him in closer under the mattress.

Liebgott just grinned widely at him. “Tijuana. Remind me to steal us some tequila so I can show you what else I learned down there.”

“Happily,” Webster concurred, arranging the pillows at his head and lying there with a hand pressed to Liebgott’s waist under the covers. He let loose a blessed grin, staring at Liebgott until his gaze turned to the radio and a glimpse of wistfulness passed over his face. “They’ve probably announced the news by now.”

“Screw it, we’ve got plans.”

Webster didn’t clarify whether that was plans for the immediate future or something besides, but as Liebgott was currently extending his palm in the universal demand for ‘cigarette, now’, he ignored that.

What was harder to ignore was the door to Liebgott’s hotel room being opened and six of his teammates flooding in the room without even having  _knocked_. Webster shot Liebgott a wary look, frantic as he dug under the bed for his clothes (yanking his t-shirt on and boxers while Grant and Christenson closed the door behind them, discussing the following day’s game).

“Hey guys,” Liebgott greeted idly, one hand draped above his head, cigarette dangling from his lips, and looking all the world like he was the king of it all. He also looked severely laid, given his bedhead, and he was absolutely naked under the covers and he didn’t seem to care one iota.

Webster was wondering (and not for the first time) just what he had gotten himself into.

“Hey, Webster,” Luz greeted idly as Skinny Sisk threw him a little salute while grinning maniacally at him.

Skinny was the one who arranged himself on the bed next to him. “I hope we’re interrupting,” he said.

“Just finishing,” Liebgott promised, gesturing around the room. “Well? What’s the news?”

“Harry’s bringing it,” Grant said. Grant, Christenson, Skinny, Luz, Perconte and Janovec had made the trip to the room and were now content to wait, even though Webster and Liebgott were very obviously still in the throes of the post-coital moment. But, apparently, that had no meaning to these guys. Liebgott passed the cigarette over to Webster, who took it and tried to ignore the way that Liebgott was resting his palm on Webster’s thigh, almost as if he was intending to start something. “Web?”

“What?” he nearly yelped, turning to look at Grant with wide eyes.

(And ignoring the way Perconte, Skinny, and Luz were cackling about him)

“I said, did you hear anything yet about the news?”

“Web’s been busy,” Liebgott said with a cocky grin. “Not so big on the hearing, the Websters, when they’ve got a…”

“Yes,  _thanks_ , Joe,” Webster snapped to get him to stop, panic rising in his voice. He turned to Skinny and managed a polite smile. “Nothing heard, so I’ll hear along with the rest of you about the fate of Express.” He managed a terse smile as that hand on his leg seemed to  _ascend_. “Joe?” he gritted out.

“Yeah,  _lieb_?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just talking with the guys,” Liebgott said, rolling his eyes. “ _Jesus_  Christ, I get a boyfriend and a Ma in one day.” There was an assorted reaction to that, mostly of pleasure and Webster took a deep breath (shaky all the way on the exhale) and tried to calm himself.

He was either going to end up in love with Joe Liebgott or he was going to kill him.

Possibly both.

“What do you say, drinks on me?” Luz suggested, glancing to Liebgott and Webster. “If it’s bad, we drink to excess and forget it ever happened. If it’s good, we…well, drink to excess and then ignore any celebratory tonguing. Skinny, we’re looking your way.”

“She liked it,” Skinny muttered with a petulant note in his voice.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that’s what they all say, any…”

Luz trailed off when he caught sight of Harry Welsh arriving in the doorway. He had a lot of restraint to him, his face painted with worry. “Guys,” he greeted, gaze skirting to the bed. “…please tell me I didn’t interrupt an orgy.”

“Not just yet,” Christenson easily joked with a breezy and broad smile. “What’s the news?”

Harry took a deep breath, the creased lines on his face worsening as he looked at the room (pausing in confusion when it came to Liebgott and Webster, but most specifically, Liebgott’s state of undress). “Well, boys, I don’t know how to say it…”

“Just spit it out,” Luz coaxed.

“We’re all stuck with each other.”

“No fucking way,” Liebgott was the first to speak after a lengthy silence. He glanced at Web, giving him a light shove in the shoulder. “Guess I won’t need handouts anymore. Although, you can still buy me a sports car and I won’t bitch.”

“You always bitch,” Webster muttered under his breath, getting a grunt of agreeing from Skinny.

From there, the silence was shattered by the general air of celebration. Grant managed to corral Christenson for a hug and Luz was already piping up to get the entire team downstairs for drinks. Just as quickly as Harry had come in the room, he was gone and a flock of Team Express was going along with him.

Webster leaned over Liebgott’s torso to yank at the t-shirt he’d tossed during the initial warm-up of events.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Liebgott questioned, palm on Webster’s chest pushing him on his back down to the bed. “I just found out I’m keeping my job and you just got your chance to try out for the team. We’re celebrating.”

“We are?” Webster asked, past the gulp he was busy taking.

“Ask me again what else I learned in TJ.”

“God, my girlfriend is so going to hate you when she inevitably meets you…” Webster said, bracing himself on the headboard, not really finding it in his heart to protest.

*

Babe was yawning heavily through all the shouts of good cheer and delight. It seemed as if the Express had been saved to fight another day and even replacements like him were going to stick on the team (even if they weren’t going to be starters anytime soon). Money was money and that was all Babe cared about. He’d taken an early night, telling Guarnere that he didn’t feel like the strip club because…well, because he just didn’t and that was that. Guarnere, Malarkey, Buck, and Muck had all pitched in to get Toye out of the hospital and give him some good cheer, if only for one night.

And Babe’s rest was being interrupted by Penkala’s, “…really annoying fucking yelping!” shouted Babe through the walls, getting a shout back from Hoobler and something about his Ma got said by Gordon. “Yeah, yeah, fuck you guys, too,” Babe muttered to himself, pulling open his hotel room door to give whoever it was a piece of his mind.

So maybe he wouldn’t be saying ‘fuck off’.

“Doc,” Babe managed, blinking in shock. “You brought…wine?”

Babe Heffron hadn’t drank wine in a long, long time. If ‘never in his life’ could qualify as a long time. He’d always had the hard stuff or beer, the stuff that Guarnere told him was the kind of drinks that  _men_  had. Wine seemed almost like the sort of thing that made this all get a lot more serious than he really had counted on.

“Heard there was good news for your job. For all our jobs,” he corrected himself almost immediately. “Express sticking together means I’ve got myself a contract for next year keeping you boys’ cuts and bruises from infections.”

Babe didn’t even really realize how wide he was grinning until Doc Roe reached across and touched two surprisingly soft fingers to the corner of his lips.

“You’re smiling there, Heffron,” he noted.

“What, I can’t be happy?” Babe managed, trying not to sound so fucking thrilled about it. It was getting pathetic. He was supposed to be a grown man with his own life. The delivery job had gotten him out of the parents’ house and now, here he was acting like a kid with a crush. What was he going to do next, tug on Roe’s nonexistent pigtails? “You’re keeping your job, I’m keeping my job, it’s good, it’s great, it’s…fuck, brilliant,” he announced.

Before he really understood that he was doing it, he leaned in and kissed Roe. Pretty damn hard too. Not in a pigtail-pulling way at all, but more of the ‘I’m deeply interested in screwing you through the mattress and still having you over for coffee the next day’ way. If that existed.

He’d have to ask Liebgott later if that existed.

Still, he was kissing Roe and he was sorta surprised he’d actually gone through with it. He was so overly surprised that he pulled himself off and stared at him with wide eyes and a blank, surprised stare.

“I really didn’t expect to do that.”

“I didn’t expect that, either,” Roe said in reply, looking slightly peaky, himself.

“What is it we’re not expecting?”

 _Shit_ , Babe swore to himself (and didn’t stop there, letting loose about a dozen other profanities). He hadn’t locked his door and of course people like Floyd Talbert just ambled on in whenever they felt like it, seeing as they had their own issues to hide from. In Talbert’s case, it just so happened to be that he was trying to avoid his room while his latest girlfriend of the week wanted to know when they could go and visit her parents. Well, and when they could go buy their little puppy-baby, as Talbert had quoted to them over dinner last night, his miserable mood not going away. He’d been hiding in rooms ever since.

And it just figured that he was in Babe’s room when Roe looked like he wanted to test the waters again with one more kiss.

From the looks of it, though, Roe didn’t seem too thoroughly upset. Babe still figured he was due to give Talbert a real good smack on the back of his head at some point later on to make up for the fact that his night was kind of ruined.

“Ready to celebrate?” Babe offered. “Heard the guys are going out for drinks, on Luz.” He chanced a nervous look sideways at Roe. “You want to come, Doc?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he agreed and strolled out of the room without even seeming the least bit concerned with the fact that Babe had been kissing him so intently such a short time ago.

Talbert glanced at Babe. “…did I interrupt something?”

“You owe me.  _Big_  time,” Babe insisted, poking a finger at his chest before storming out of the room after Roe. Funniest thing was, though. After that kiss (slow and sweet, like nectar on a warm day), he wasn’t sure how upset he really was.

He still wasn’t about to turn down some leverage, though.

*

**ONE YEAR LATER**

The doorbell had been ringing constantly for nearly five minutes, though Lipton was constantly shouting out the second-story window that he was coming any second. Apparently, that didn’t do and he wasn’t quite punctual enough because the doorbell buzzed, then buzzed, and buzzed some more.

Eventually, Lipton pulled the door open and greeted Speirs with a weary smile. “Ron, you’re going to wear out the battery on that. Again.”

“Be more punctual,” was Speirs’ curt and simple response as he entered the room, shoving his hands into his pockets and circling the living room. “So, the season is over, we are no longer coach and captain, I was thinking that maybe we could go ahead and take that step we’ve been talking about.”

Lipton only had to take one look at Speirs to see that he’d dressed up to go to the movies. He had on a pressed white-shirt and a navy-blue jacket atop his ironed jeans. Speirs had ironed his jeans for Lipton and the man wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen a gesture more romantic from Ronald Speirs.

“This was supposed to be a team night out,” Lipton reminded him.

“Which reminds me. Muck cancelled on behalf of about half the team in favor of the strip club, Buck and Harry are visiting Winters, and Liebgott…well, will be there anyway and attending a different movie,” Speirs admitted, considering that he couldn’t dissuade the other man in their brief phone conversation. “He said he would rather not look at me. Something about visceral memories of running suicides every time he sees me.”

Lipton grasped his coat as he opened the door. “You’re lucky, then.”

“Lucky?”

“That every time I look at you, I just see my ex-girlfriends’ face,” he deadpanned, without much humor in his voice at all.

Speirs winced heavily at the small reminder of how they had managed to get to this place over several years time. Lipton held onto that stern glare for another five minutes as they locked up his place, but eventually he softened and affixed Speirs with a much gentler look.

“Ron?”

“What?” he barked back, clearly having slid into defensive mode.

“I also see the man I trust with my life,” he said quietly. “When I look at you.”

That seemed to thaw the mood between them an infinitesimal amount and they continued the walk to the theater in silence. Speirs still had his posture set in a manner that said he wasn’t exactly over the words Lipton had leveled his way.

“I also see the most handsome man I know when I look at you,” Lipton very patiently pointed out, when they were buying tickets and that cold mood hadn’t shifted enough. If it lasted, it would have cast an awkward cloud over the whole evening and some sacrifices could occasionally be made in the face of enjoying the night out. Even if they were still only ‘just friends’ by Lipton’s request.

And if he didn’t know any better, that well-placed compliment was now making Ronald Speirs  _preen_  of all things.

He turned, giving Lipton a long appraising look as he held out the ticket and wrapped his arm around his shoulders, tugging him in close.

“You say you’re not ready to trust me as a boyfriend, yet you trust me with your life,” Speirs commented, lips hovering right by his ear, opening the door for him as they walked. “I find that slightly suspect.”

Lipton’s lips barely lifted an inch, but it was just enough to show Speirs what he was really thinking, deep down. “It’s been a year. A lot has changed.”

“It’s been a very long year, Carwood,” Speirs deadpanned. “I’m not going to cheat on you. You subjected me to enough speeches so that I now know the full span of your morals and how I’m a horrible man for what I did, which I accept full responsibility for, even if you’ve also been extremely bullheaded about all of this.”

Lipton kept leading Speirs to the back of the empty theatre, shuffling into the middle of the row until he found the seats directly in the center of the theater. And before he sat down, he grasped hold of Speirs’ scarf and yanked him into a kiss, strong arms holding him in place and one hand descending to grasp him by the hip.

He parted and let his fingers trail over Speirs’ scarf, tucking it properly back into place before sliding into his seat.

“We’re not watching this movie, are we?” Speirs asked suspiciously, sinking into his chair.

“I’m very interested in the plot the critics raved about,” Lipton managed to say with fraught concern. He lazily tipped his head to one side to see Speirs pressing his lips against his, erasing all arguments about what the morals of the movie might be.

Even Lipton wasn’t this strong.

He was up on his feet before the previews were even rolling and grabbing hold of Speirs’ hand. “Just because we’re doing this doesn’t mean we’re back together yet,” he warned Speirs with a very serious look on his face.

“This still means we’re having sex in the men’s room,” Speirs pointed out, an utterly flat look on his face and a mostly-devoid array of emotions on his face.

Lipton sighed, wondering how Speirs had known that the men’s room was even an option for the normally-dignified areas they tended to hover around. “…yes. But we’re not dating. Yet.”

“You almost made me watch a chick flick. I’d say we are,” Speirs said, but that was the last word on the subject as he tugged Lipton around the corner.

*

There were boxes arriving to Richard Winters’ apartment in Pennsylvania on a seemingly never-ending basis. Every time he thought there couldn’t be more, another two small cardboard boxes would end up on his front porch, like abandoned orphan children in need of a good home. He marked yet another box with the contents, capping the black marker as he set them aside in the spare room. Today, ‘BELTS’ and ‘POT COVERS’ would join the assorted other boxes that had slowly been trickling in over the last nineteen weeks (to be precisely precise).

He let out another weary sigh to join the collection of exhalations he had been practicing, wiping the dust from his hands on the seat of his jeans as he watched Nixon come up the front walk, aviator sunglasses sitting comfortably on his face.

“Did my belts and pots come?” he asked excitedly.

“Nix, I kind of wish you would try and move in more than one baby step at a time,” Winters said after a moment of thought as to how best to put it. Holding up a belt in one hand, he let Nixon inspect it and withheld comment as Nix pulled out a flask and took a long drink down.

Nixon was unwinding the belt and sliding it on, shooting Winters a pointed look. “If I do it en masse, I either hire movers or trick the team into thinking this somehow constitutes team practice. They’re in the off season and I don’t want movers touching my crap. So I send over a box by taxi a week. What’s wrong with that?”

“It implies you don’t really want to move in with me?” Winters suggested, being that was exactly what he felt like was happening. He opened the door wider and gestured for Nixon to come into the bungalow. It was comfortable and it backed a great span of land, just like Winters had wanted when it came to property.

Nixon just shot him a dirty look. “Is this how you’ve been interpreting it? Just write me off as lazy, it’s easier and we don’t have to fight about it.”

“Do you want to move in?”

“I’m the one who asked, didn’t I?” Nixon replied with a mild amount of an edge in his voice. “I mean, hell, here I thought Jersey, but you wanted Pennsylvania and it’s not like we exactly see home for the months we’re on the road,” he pointed out, like he was always an inch away from leaping into sarcasm. “So what if it takes me all summer. You can make it into a game. What comes next?”

“Pants and pans,” Winters presumed a guess.

That seemed to be the right guess, because it went quite a ways in making Nixon speechless and scowl-bearing. “You know me too well,” he accused. “Way too well.”

“Nixon, do you want to move in with me?” Winters was going to take the blunt approach now if he couldn’t ferret the answer out of his long-term boyfriend any other way. If this didn’t work, he was going to have to use ten glasses of alcohol or so as a lubricant for the truth. Winters was more than hoping it wouldn’t come to that. “You can say no and I won’t be angry.”

“I’ve seen you angry exactly twice,” Nixon pointed out. “And never because of me. I’m actually starting to think it’s impossible to rile you up.”

Winters stared Nixon down as they cast shadows in the front hall of the small house. There still hadn’t been an answer and neither man had let that slip past their notice.

“You’re really going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Nixon sighed, stepping forward and closing the space between their bodies. “If it takes me hiring a moving company, I will. Yes, Dick, I want to move in with you. I practically lived with you on the road and I’m used to your annoyingly  _perfect_  habits.”

Very slowly, a smile began to build on Winters’ face and Nixon’s annoyance faded in the face of it.

It was made almost nonexistent when Winters leaned in to cup Nixon’s neck with one firm hand, kissing him on the lips with the wall pressing up against Winters’ back, supporting him as he brought Nixon back with him for a longer comfortable kiss, the kind they had practiced and perfected over their years-long relationship.

That hand on Nixon’s neck slowly slid down his back, passing the wrinkles of a creased t-shirt and untucking it until it was loosely hanging over his jeans.

“That’s a yes, by the way,” Nixon murmured against Winters’ lips. “Bluntly, yes, I do want to move in with you.”

Winters’ fingers curled lightly at the small of Nixon’s back and he coaxed him slowly into the sun-dappled bedroom that contained several boxes still unpacked and littering the room at odd intervals. For every three steps, there was a new box. With two strides, they overtook the ‘ADAPTORS’ and then another few before the bed was ‘CALENDARS (OLD)’. The beddings were still belonging to Dick Winters in their one-color, no-toned sameness and Nixon went down first, lying on his back and spreading his legs as habit told him to while Winters slowly crawled over top him and settled in a comfortable straddle.

“God, do you remember when we first started doing this?” Nixon reminisced with a burst of a laugh, grasping in the nighttable bed for the packet of lube, sliding his sunglasses off and making sure they were safe on the table-top. “It took you  _forever_  to get comfortable enough without thinking God was about to smite you.”

“I have very…strict beliefs,” Winters managed to hiss out when Nixon’s fingers slipped inside his slacks and undid the button and slid the zipper down, fingers always just barely brushing him and giving him only the slightest touches. It was more than enough to get him going.

“God doesn’t care enough to be doing smiting,” Nixon pointed out, pushing Winters’ boxers down and out of the way, shifting his own hips with a roll up to get himself unclothed to the point of being able to do something.

They worked quickly and without much discussion as to the technical aspects of what they were doing. They were close enough that they could communicate without words if need be and it only took a look for them to confirm how this was going to work: Winters on top, Nixon on the bottom, but Winters wasn’t going to be the one doing the screwing.

Nixon almost bit out a comment about him sinning by proxy, but he held it back when Winters slid down onto Nixon once they were both ready and prepared. All he managed was hissing out a profane praise.

“You like watching,” Nixon accused.

Winters didn’t even bother to commit an answer to that, instead making the first motion forward, gripping Nixon by the shoulders to give himself leverage and control over all of the angles. He tended to work in silence when they got to the bedroom. Nixon didn’t mind the majority of the time and was hard pressed to mind now when the sun cast light on Winters’ body and highlighted each pale patch of skin, each bout of freckles.

Nixon tended to be the noisy one, gasps and utterances and bursts of groans, moans of Winters’ name (sometimes the first, sometimes the last, sometimes ‘you redheaded _bastard_ ) and they worked in tandem with a rhythm that was smooth and graceful, without any interruptions in their routine.

Nixon had a tendency to come first, which neither of them complained about. Today, in the shining sun and in the private bedroom with no noises but themselves and the creak of the wooden bed, he did again.

Winters followed soon after with a sigh and a fond murmur of Nixon’s name, pressed up against his neck and exhaled warmly against his skin.

It took a fair matter of minutes for the both of them to recover enough to speak. “Well?” Winters murmured finally, fingers draped over Nixon’s chest.

“If we’re christening everything like that, maybe I will move in faster,” Nixon ruefully noted, pushing at the bedspread with his foot. He groaned and let his head fall back against the pillows set up in the bedroom. “You ready for another season? I’ve been putting new tactics in, just in case Sink gets any funny ideas about dismantling the Express.”

“What would they do without you?” Winters postulated aloud, watching the sun cast its light across Nixon’s body in slanted lines.

Nixon snorted. “Probably try and stage less interventions.”

“Well, there is that.”

“So, that couch of yours looks pretty comfortable…”

“Pace yourself, Lew.”

Nixon bit back his comment about Winters being no fun because when a man had just gotten laid as well as he just did, he couldn’t afford to be ungrateful.

*

The player development contracts were rounding year three of four and each member of Team Express had re-signed for another season (with the exception of Joe Toye, who had still been healing from his mid-season injury while Bill had managed a full recovery in time to rejoin them). As with every other year, the team was meeting at a casual bar in Los Angeles to talk and find out what had happened during the off-season.

“Great big tits,” Liebgott was enthusing, gesturing with his hands to make a pantomime of exactly  _how_  big they had been. He inhaled deeply from his cigarette and launched into a copious description of just how they had looked, how they might have felt, how they…

“Don’t annoy your teammates,” a plodding sing-song tone came and hands descended on Liebgott’s shoulders as Webster leaned down to press a greeting kiss to his cheek, pressing a pack of cigarettes into his hand. “And I really wish you wouldn’t talk about my sister like that,” he went on, the discomfort clear in his tone as Christenson vacated the seat beside Joe and let Webster have it.

“Hey, Web,” Luz called out from across the room. “You sign?”

“I just came back,” Webster agreed, giving Liebgott a searching look, as if looking for joy or relief or anger. “Signed on as the new leftie pitcher for Team Express for a two year contract while Martin is taking up that lucrative construction business offer he got.”

“Don’t even think for a fucking second this means I’ll stop heckling you,” Liebgott informed him, closing the distance between them as he spoke, grabbing hold of the back of Webster’s neck with one hand and yanking him into a fierce kiss, the kind that made most everyone look away before things got uncomfortable (and not in the good way, as Muck had once put it). He leaned back after nipping at Webster’s neck, glancing over his shoulder to where Lipton and Speirs were sitting in the corner, having just been left by Buck with a handful of drinks. “Hey, Buck!” Liebgott shouted over. “What’d Harry say the dress code was like for this bachelor party of his, tomorrow night?”

“Lewd if you’re female, whatever the hell you want if you’re not,” Buck joked warmly, bringing over the drinks to the table, sliding each to their respective owners.

The wedding was due to happen in a week before the season really got into the swing of things and Harry had been adamant that he required no showing of strippers and that Kitty was all he needed. Express had gone behind his back because as Muck had put it, ‘I think we need them more than you do. Not all of us have stalwart UCLA-graduate hunks to fall back on’ before Malarkey had smacked him heavily behind the head (the coupling was a sore note for Muck, who had taken to asking Malarkey out time after time and had finally gotten his yes).

Webster was taking his leave with Liebgott in tow as the conversation turned to the coming season and men flitted in and out of the bar, ready for a night continued elsewhere or for an early night’s sleep. Two people flooding in at the late hour happened to be Babe and Roe, coming back in from a fifth ‘first date’ being that the majority of the others were always ruined by something or  _someone_.

“You swear you two aren’t back on or anything?”

“Jeez, Muck,” Malarkey was commenting in a whine, grabbing at the beer. “So we had a fling. It’s not like he’s wooing me like he is that blonde he’s got with him. He and I are done. Completely.”

Babe arched a brow, wondering just how much he’d missed. His plane had come in from Philly just two days ago and he was seeing Doc for the first time since. They couldn’t seem to manage to get their things together for a date, but they kept trying. One day, Babe thought, one day they were going to get to the second date. He was pretty confused, though.

“Malarkey and Muck?” he asked Roe, worry fraught on his face.

“Happened just last month,” Roe assured him, hand on his back, guiding him to the bar where he could order a couple of pints of beer. “Buck found himself a buxom beauty he fell for. Their arrangement fell through and Muck’s been pining over Don pretty much all summer.”

“Ah.”

Babe couldn’t help wondering what else Guarnere was keeping from him in his phone calls home (or if he was actively doing any keeping or if he was just occupied with Los Angeles’ bathing beauties as he tended to be every time the summer months rolled around). He cast a weak smile in Roe’s direction, trying to ignore Luz and Perconte’s loud argument about poker, while Talbert tried to chat up the bartender nearby.

“Well,” Babe sighed with a grin. “I guess it’s like coming home.”

“Even if they ruin our dates?”

“Hell, especially when,” Babe managed with a wry smirk. “I’m pretty sure no one’s going to be watching when Harry’s wedding is in full gear. We’ll have plenty of time.” At least, that was what he was counting on. Until then, he could just enjoy drinking a beer with the team around him and the sounds of his friends and family welcoming him back for another season.

There really was no place like home.

“Hey, Babe!” Guarnere announced eagerly. “When the fuck did you get off the plane?”

Yeah, definitely no place like.

*

It was dark by the time Webster was shutting down his computer for the last time at the newspaper, his desk looking lonely and bereft as it was missing all his usual things and the chaotic smattering of papers that typically accompanied him on every day that he came into work. He’d abandoned the bar to make sure he had everything out by first thing in the morning before someone else came in and took over his job.

All he had left was a cardboard box’s worth of possessions.

“Thought you’d be here.”

Webster ruefully smiled as he glanced up to see Liebgott lurking in the doorway, illuminated only by the lamp on his desk. It was like every other visit they’d had except the conversation hadn’t started with profanities and insults and ended with drunken comments about how each man ‘wasn’t so bad at all’.

“Packing up. My last article is submitted and my two weeks notice is officially up,” Webster announced, hitching the box up on his hip.

Liebgott eased closer, perching on the desk and giving Webster a wary look. “Let me guess. Something about how I’m really a crap player and I hate women or something?”

“You’re showing a lot of promise in the training camps,” Webster replied, narrating from memory as he strained to recall. “And while your antics off-field have greatly reduced in number, your on-field taunting could still use a bit of a shaping-up. However,” he noted, seeing the scowl on Liebgott’s face, “your throw is one of the fastest in the league thanks to some off-season practice.”

“So, what, I’m sleeping with you and the news is still only fifty-percent good?” he asked incredulously. “If I’d known that…”

“What, you wouldn’t still be doing me a year later?” Webster interrupted to taunt him mildly, setting the box down on the desk and leaning up against the desk next to Liebgott, craning his head to the side to study him. “Someone else is going to be writing about the league, now. So, you can come malign their reputation instead of me.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be  _sleeping_  and putting up with your bitching  _all_  the time instead of just once a month.”

Liebgott just grinned mischievously, any pureness in that smile disappearing as a flicker of naughtiness crossed over his face and that grin became more of a smirk.

“…what?” Webster asked warily, catching wind of that look.

“After all the fucking fighting we did over this desk, I was thinking maybe…”

“No.”

“Aw,  _c’mon_ , Web,” he whined.

“No!”

That didn’t seem to jive with the fact that Liebgott was already leaning over Webster, pressing him horizontal on the emptied desk, getting his back firm and flat with a heavy _thump_. Webster was breathing harder, his eyes wide and panicked as they scanned the office around them.

Liebgott leaned over him, a hand shoved into Webster’s jeans to the sound of a whimper of protest from the ex-writer and now-pitcher.

“Why haven’t I dumped you?”

“You have,” Liebgott reminded him. “Three times. You keep crawling back.”

“Me?” Webster noted with a scoff. “Who was on my door the last two times with beer and demanding to come in and that you were sorry?”

“Just because your ex-girlfriend is a bitch and she can’t have you.” Liebgott insisted, baring his teeth for a flash of a moment before kissing Webster and shutting up whatever argument was bound to come next.

With one well-placed kick of a foot, Webster’s belongings in that cardboard box were suddenly sprawled all over the floor and there were no more protests from either of them. Another kick and the lamp was on the floor, the bulb flickering on its last legs before it, too, gave out and ceased to illuminate the both of them as they said goodbye to a part of their lives.

 _Well_ , Webster thought to himself headily.  _If the first story about me is public sex, there could be worse things._

After all, it wasn’t like he could be fired. And it seemed an all-too-fitting welcome to Team Express, the toughest sons of bitches in the league with all the scandal following them and all the rumors circulating about each player and their  _reputation_.

They just also happened to be the most interesting ones, too. And they were the best. That was what really mattered when it came down to it.

It was time for another season and Webster was ready for the good and the bad that came with it.

THE END


	2. All's Well That Ends Vaguely Sober

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Welsh's bachelor party. It might as well be the last night on Earth.

“I really don’t like this.”   
  
Harry was pacing behind the full-length mirror. Though he had protested again and again that he had no use for a bachelor party and that he just wanted to skip to the wedding, here he was in a room with Floyd Talbert, Buck Compton, Popeye Wynn and Joe Liebgott. The last of the men was staring in the mirror as he slicked back his hair and adjusted his tie.    
  
“Guys, I just want to marry Kitty, I don’t want strippers,” Harry continued protesting, even as the other men just watched him pace.   
  
“See, Welsh, that’s the thing, there,” Popeye cracked with a sunny smile. “You don’t want the strippers, but boy, I’ll tell you, there’s about two dozen of us who could really use some female attentions after the last year we’ve gone through.”   
  
“Not to mention Dave says if we don’t make sure you turn up, he’ll have my head,” Liebgott added helpfully. “Apparently, Muck and Luz got something planned.”   
  
“That’s terrifying,” Harry spat out. “You realize that? I mean, you honestly realize saying Muck and Luz have something up their sleeves is  _horrifying_ ?”   
  
“Half the reason I’m so eager to see it,” Liebgott cracked and went back to whistling and fixing his hair. He shifted over when Talbert gave him a light push to take his turn, adjusting the lapels of his suit. Liebgott was content to light up a cigarette and lean against the desk next to Buck.   
  
Harry, for his part, still looked pretty miserable. “Please tell me you didn’t get me a lapdance.”   
  
“Harry, this party is less about you and more about the team,” Talbert admitted. “We’re sneaking Kitty in around ten so you two can do whatever it is you want. I mean, once the boys give you their surprise.”   
  
“That  _is_  slightly terrifying,” Buck admitted, leaning over to accept a cigarette Liebgott was holding out. “You’re a pusher, Liebgott, swear to god,” he muttered under his breath as he lit up. “…been trying to quit. Anyway,” he said, directed at Harry. “Winters knows what’s going on, so it can’t be too horrific or law-breaking.”   
  
“You’re sure it was Dick and not Nix who was just approving in his stead?” Harry asked suspiciously.   
  
“Had a face-to-face with the man himself and he knows all about it,” Buck swore, crossing his heart. He handed back the cigarette to Liebgott, studying him curiously. “You have no idea what’s going on, not at all?”   
  
“Why should I?”   
  
“Because Web’s been planning it all with Muck and Luz and you’re screwing him on a nightly basis.”   
  
“Three times,” Liebgott corrected with a smug shit-eating grin. “He doesn’t tell me everything so let’s get on the road already.”   
  
“I still say you should accidentally lose me on the way,” Welsh muttered, even as he was getting manhandled out the door by a very effective Buck Compton and a somewhat-less-than-effective Popeye Wynn.    
  
The trip to the club might well have been the walk down to an executioner’s room, Harry was so silent. There were a couple of attempts on Talbert and Popeye’s part to cheer him up, but the shadow cast from the mere words ‘Muck and Luz planned something for you’ had apparently rendered Harry mute and fearful.   
  
When they arrived, it almost looked as though Buck was going to serve his purpose for being there (which had been, simply, ‘if you have to, use those big strong man-arms of yours to pry him outta those seats’, as Mal had put it), but Harry kept on trudging forward, one foot after the other.    
  
Buck was also the one who stood in the doorway to ensure that Harry didn’t bolt. Two steps in was all it took for him to get a good view of exactly how the night was going to play out.   
  
“Sweet…Jesus,” Harry noted in horror. “That’s Muck. And that’s Luz. And they’re in drag on stripper poles.” His eyes were possibly the widest that any human eye on record had gone in years and they seemed to bug wider when Muck started to wrap a leg around the pole and dip backwards “…I need to go.”   
  
“Screw ‘em, Harry, just ignore the freakshow,” came Nixon’s voice from the bar.    
  
_The bar!_ , thought Harry.  _Alcohol will save me!_  thought he, as all sane men at bachelor parties had thought once upon a time in their lives.   
  
He nearly made a world record sprint over to the bar and ignored Speirs settled precariously in Lipton’s lap on a bar stool as he twisted and dodged and came upon Nixon and Winters at the end of the counter. “This is clearly an abomination,” Harry noted, yanking the beer from in front of Winters. “You’re not drinking this. Just keep ‘em coming.”   
  
He planted himself down on a stool next to Nixon and was getting started on making determined work of putting an imprint there. His back was to the stage (where he was pretty sure the strains of ‘Barbie Girl’ were coming from Luz and Penkala with Skinny offering harmonies) and he was ignoring any conflicting smells of perfume that could have been dabbed on men’s necks and why did he have these friends? What possible reason could he have to keep friends like these?   
  
“What’d I miss?” Harry asked of Winters.   
  
“Speirs nearly got the police called on us,” Nixon offered.   
  
“…how?”   
  
“He brought in a leather crop. He was just joking around about using in on Lipton … we think he was joking …anyway, joking around about using it when Janovec started actually asking if he could borrow it for a little while. Janovec and one of the strippers haven’t been seen in…”   
  
“Don’t want to know,” Harry interrupted that and shut his eyes tightly, leaning half his body over the bar to try and get a tequila shot so he could start getting on the happy and forgetful side of blindingly drunk. The first shot went down smooth and the lemon he took a bite out of tasted really damn good.   
  
Two hours later, he wouldn’t think the same, but he could take his victories where they came.   
  
“The display behind you involves Muck and Luz, Babe and Martin, Web,” Winters listed off on his fingers. “Who all turned up in drag. The first four are around performing, Web’s pretty much making calls on his cell phone and trying to hide in the shadows. He was waiting for Liebgott to show up and I’m pretty sure he lost a bet to have to do it.”   
  
Harry opened his mouth to ask which of them looked the most natural and closed it before he could say something he was going to severely regret. Not to mention at least now he knew to look for incriminating Adam’s apples in strippers.    
  
Harry took Shot Number Two of tequila to try and wipe away the fact he was pretty sure Babe’s stuffed that shirt of his with tissues.    
  
“Anything else?” Harry asked, almost nervous about the answer.   
  
“Guarnere got in a fistfight with the bouncer over something, Nixon’s already half-drunk, Malarkey’s drooling over Muck’s depressively low-backed dress, Martin’s engaged and he’s keeping it on the down-low so don’t mention that I told you, Buck’s gone monogamous with his girlfriend, Webster and Liebgott are absconding after your wedding to some tropical paradise,” Winters relayed in a very calm manner, ticking off each piece of news like it’s nothing at all. “And Kitty’s here.”   
  
“God bless you,” Welsh sighed with happiness as he turned and greeted his bride-to-be with a wide smile on his face, smile turning even wider when she sat herself on his lap. “You have no idea how happy I am you came early.”   
  
“Harry,” Kitty noted with concern.   
  
“Yeah, babe?”   
  
“…is one of those strippers Luz?”   
  
“I wish to god it weren’t.”   
  
So while Harry might not have been privy to the antics of the show behind him, he definitely was going to count the party as a large success given the fact that he was getting a continuous, never-ending lapdance from the one woman he wanted it from. And this way, no incriminating pictures of him and Muck were likely to turn up anywhere.   
  
…well, at least, ones that weren’t photoshopped.    
  
*   
  
Liebgott had to take a long break from the insanity to wonder just where in the hell Webster had gotten to. Cell phone in hand, he was leaning against the corner wall of the club and trying to avoid the way Malarkey was sniffing around Muck’s quite-literal-heels in order to ask him if he would keep the flapper-like dress on for the rest of the night. He could do with ignoring the whole Harry and Kitty making out by the bar thing, not to mention the fact that a couple of the guys had started stripping with the girls.   
  
And yeah, Liebgott might be dating a guy and had been doing so for a year now, but there was just no goddamn good reason to ruin all that natural beauty.    
  
Webster still wasn’t picking up.    
  
“Son of a bitch,” Liebgott cursed to himself. “I swear, if you stood me up…”   
  
“I did not stand you up, you jackass, I’ve been right under your nose all  _night_ ,” came Webster’s voice from right behind him, irritable and sharp. Liebgott turned long enough to see the familiar blue eyes, but definitely nothing else that he was expecting. Maybe he should have been aware that when Muck and Luz turned up in drag, they had brought others with them to help. And maybe Martin and Babe couldn’t pull it off, but…   
  
“Oh, Jesus,” Liebgott vocalized his deep concern of what was in front of him. He wasn’t even  _trying_  very hard. He had on a pair of skinny jeans that managed to show off the slim waist (which Liebgott’s mother had been trying to undo for about four months now, ever since Joe had brought Webster home) and a fake padded bra with tight t-shirt and he had shaved  _completely_ . Arms, chest, face, and Liebgott didn’t even want to know about the legs.   
  
It wasn’t that, though. If you looked at that, it’d be fairly clear that it was just a man in drag (or a very butch woman, Liebgott supposed). No, the disturbing part was definitely the natural-looking black wig with loose curls and the makeup that just made Web’s normally-pretty face look a bit too disturbingly pretty.    
  
“My sister helped,” Webster admitted when he caught Liebgott staring at his face. “She was a bit disappointed it took me nearly twenty-four years to ask to play dress up with her.” He dabbed a finger to his pink-tinted lips, glancing down with his mascara-tinged lashes and oh god, Liebgott was in trouble.   
  
He twisted up his fingers in that tight t-shirt and yanked Webster closer to him, coaxing one leg around his waist and trying to remember if there were private rooms in the back of this club.    
  
“Joe,” Webster murmured, glancing down at him with those big blue eyes.    
  
“Just be glad I’m not hitting on your sister, wouldja?” Liebgott mumbled and shoved open the door to one of the back rooms. “Jesus Christ, you look way too hot with that stuff on your face and the wig.” He straddled Webster almost instantly, kissing him deeply and so intently that he didn’t care one bit how much smudged lipstick happened as a result. “You’re not taking the wig off,” he informed Webster bluntly and reached back to give the door a good slam shut.   
  
Yeah, he was in a lot of trouble alright. Here Liebgott thought he couldn’t get into any more, being Webster’s boyfriend and all. How wrong he was on that count.    
  
*   
  
It wasn’t until five in the morning that the club began to slowly ‘invite’ its guests to leave. Luz and Perconte were by the door to greet everyone a good night as they trickled out. Harry and Kitty had absconded hours ago when it became clear that the party was less about getting strippers to dance in Harry’s lap and more coveting the strippers’ attention for themselves.   
  
One of the side doors slammed and Perconte jabbed Luz in the elbow to get his attention.   
  
“Liebgott,” Luz greeted jovially, smirking and fluffing the curly wig he’d yet to take off (along with the miniskirt and the mesh shirt over the tank top). “You ah, got a bit of lipstick there,” he delighted in adding, jutting a thumb at his lip.    
  
Behind him, Webster was straggling out, dark wig frizzy from pulling and humidity.   
  
“Thanks for the party, boys,” Liebgott murmured, voice lazy and sated. “Don’t think I’m ever going to forget this one.” He turned and draped an arm around Webster’s waist. “We’re heading out after the wedding. Web’s family’s got tickets to the Pacific. I got a month of sun tanning and beach-lazing to do,” he noted proudly.   
  
“Jesus, maybe I should have hit on you more often,” Perconte said as he looked Webster up and down. “This is what, the fifth trip you’ve taken Joe on?”   
  
“Sixth if you include the time we went to Paris for the weekend,” Webster admitted, shifting uneasily when Perconte and Luz’s stares didn’t exactly abate and go anywhere. “Guys?” he indicated. “Can I go before this gets even weirder?”    
  
“Yeah, go on, get outta here,” Luz encouraged, tipping his head to one side and watching as Liebgott pinched at Webster’s behind while they made for their car (Webster had not touched a single drop, citing the desire to be able to clearly recall anything anyone said to him about the makeup so he could make their life miserable in the coming days).    
  
Perconte and Luz escorted themselves out while Muck yanked off the wig to Malarkey’s great despair. “Oh, come on,” he complained. “I want to wear it.”   
  
“You’re not an autumn,” Muck said with great condescension.   
  
“Fuck that, I am too!”   
  
“Neither of you pull off auburn like I do, so shut your traps,” Penkala muttered and yanked the wig into his possession. They stumbled out in a pile of three men fighting over one pixie-cut bob wig and were trailed by a very dubious Lipton and Buck.    
  
“Where’s Speirs?” Shifty asked warily as he searched for his keys (having appointed himself designated driver for a bunch of them).   
  
Lipton managed an apologetic smile. “He went to retrieve his crop from Janovec. Said he’d meet me at home.”   
  
No one asked for clarification because no one  _wanted_  clarification.    
  
As the last of the men trickled out, all that were left at the early hour of five in the morning (or possibly half-past) was a bleary-Richard Winters and an active and chipper-Lewis Nixon. “How are you so awake?” Winters wondered as he tried to keep himself conscious.    
  
“What, this? Please, I’m used to not sleeping until the sun comes up.” Nixon managed a wink in Winters’ direction as he started lifting bottles and glasses and knocking back any remnants, lips pressed lower than the rim to be safe. “When’d Harry and his true love get out of here?”   
  
“Sometime between Muck’s rendition of It’s Raining Men and Popeye thinking Liebgott’s howling was a wounded animal,” Winters deadpanned.    
  
“Yeah, that was a good song,” was Nixon’s pleased reply, dry and deadpan as anything. “Liebgott was okay?”    
  
“Speirs’ ropes went missing.” One single look between them explained how the latter was relevant to the former. It didn’t take much more than a well-placed look between the two men for things to come to the light. “I didn’t know he was such a…”   
  
“I think it’s new,” Nixon interrupted. “And I’m not sure it’s for anything but show. I really can’t see Lipton consenting to something like that, you know?” Or maybe it was the perverse hope that Carwood Lipton  _wasn’t_  acquiescing to something as such that kept the men insisting on such a belief. He rubbed at his eyes and surveyed the damage done. “So, there’s a security deposit? Because I’m pretty sure the dart board didn’t look like that at the beginning of the night. And I wish I knew whose bright idea it was to use a pool cue for the sex-toy piñata breaking.”   
  
“Who thought of that?” Winters asked dubiously.   
  
“Joint effort between Buck and More,” Nixon said and then flashed a broad grin. “I made sure I ferreted away a bunch of the stuff in my bag.”   
  
“So we’re good to get out of here?”   
  
“Unless you want to sit in the debris and feel guilty for the men,” Nixon said with a dubious look in Winters’ direction, as if he was yet unsure as to whether or not that wasn’t so much a joke as it was serious. “Then yeah, we’re good to go.”   
  
“Big day soon enough. I have to get you dressed for a wedding,” Winters noted, resting his hand on the small of Nixon’s back as he gently coaxed him towards the door. “That’s, what,” he said thoughtfully, “a full day event to get you ready for?”   
  
“Ha ha. You’re a real comedian, Dick.”   
  
“I mean, the bowtie alone…”   
  
“Yeah, I get it, I’m a slob.”   
  
“And that’s not even saying a word about the cummerbund…”   
  
“Are we getting out of here or what?”   
  
“We’re going,” Winters assured. “You did say you had a bag’s worth of interesting souvenirs. I thought we’d spend the day leading up to the wedding saving up our energy. Or possibly expending it. It is the off-season and we do need our exercise.” Out in the parking lot, Winters didn’t take his hand off of Nixon’s back. “It keeps a person from getting sick.”   
  
“Only you could turn sex into something healthy and beneficial to the immune system,” Nixon marveled. “Alright, Major Wellness, let’s get home.”   
  
That they passed several a cop car hovering outside the bar shouldn’t have been a surprise. That they hadn’t raided the bar was. Upon seeing why they hadn’t, Winters simply sidestepped the friendly game of poker going on heralded by Talbert, Bull, Christenson, Smokey, and Grant. “Evening, boys,” Winters greeted as he stepped over many a spent cigar and eyed the money on the hood of the car.   
  
“See you, sir,” Christenson dutifully commented.    
  
Winters barely managed to get past the cars before he caught Nixon staring at him intently. “Alright, alright,” he calmly noted. “We’re going.”


End file.
